General   Survey 

OF 

American   Literature 


A 

General  Survey 


or 


American  Literature 

BY 

MARY   FISHER 

AUTHOR  OF  "A  GROUP  OF  FRENCH  CRITICS" 


"  The  most  interesting  books  to  me  are  the  histories  of  individuals  and 
individual  minds ;  all  autobiographies  and  the  like.  This  is  my  favorite  read 
ing."  —  HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 


CHICAGO 

A.  C.  McCLURG   AND   COMPANY 
1899 


COPYRIGHT 
BY  A.  C.  MCCLURG  AND  Co. 

A.D.    1899 


v 


PREFACE 


THE  following  book  on  American  literature  has 
grown  largely  out  of  the  author's  work  in  the 
class-room.  There  was  no  hurried  daily  flight  from 
author  to  author,  leaving  upon  the  mind  of  the  pupil 
a  confused  impression  of  dates,  names,  and  lists  of 
books;  but  a  careful  and  prolonged  attention  was 
given  to  the  author  as  a  man  and  a  thinker. 

In  preparing  for  recitation,  the  pupil  was  encour 
aged  as  much  as  possible  to  find  the  author  in  his 
works  and  to  grow  familiar  with  his  thoughts  and 
feelings.  He  was  asked  to  discuss  important  ques 
tions  suggested  by  his  literary  and  biographical  re 
search,  and  every  effort  was  made  to  make  the  study 
not  a  memory  drill,  but  a  stimulus  to  thought  and  a 
source  of  wider  culture.  For  this  purpose,  the  meagre 
and  uninteresting  information  of  the  text-books,  con 
fined  merely  to  external  details,  was  found  wofully 
deficient,  and  material  from  every  available  source 
was  collected  to  eke  it  out. 

To  place  this  material  within  the  reach  of  other 
students  and  to  direct  them  to  the  intelligent  study 
of  American  literature  are  ideas  which  have  been 
continually  before  me  in  the  preparation  of  this 
volume. 


MG84000 


vi  PREFACE 

Each  biographical  sketch  is  accompanied  with  a 
critical  estimate  of  the  author's  works  founded  upon 
an  application  of  the  recognized  canons  of  sound 
criticism.  To  know  why  a  given  work  is  good  re 
quires  a  maturity  of  judgment  which  is  not  to  be 
found  in  young  students,  although  their  healthy,  un 
trammelled  instincts  may  often  lead  them  to  select 
and  enjoy  what  is  really  fine.  This  naturally  correct 
taste  is  in  no  danger  of  being  vitiated  if  the  mind 
really  perceives  the  reason  for  the  existence  of  such 
a  taste.  Otherwise  it  is  in  danger  of  being  seduced 
by  plausible  rhetoric  or  popular  clamor  into  admiring 
what  is  far  from  admirable.  Hence  the  necessity  of 
teaching  the  young  the  principles  of  good  taste  in 
literature. 

More  attention  has  also  been  given  to  personal 
details  in  the  biographical  sketches  than  at  a  super 
ficial  glance  may  seem  necessary ;  but  it  is  these  very 
details  that  individualize  a  man  and  help  us  to  form 
a  correct  idea  of  him.  There  is  too  little  of  such 
individualizing  in  our  text-books,  and  our  authors  do 
not  stand  out  in  them  as  men  of  striking  character, 
but  as  mere  names  to  which  are  appended  a  list  of 
works.  The  value  of  biography  lies  in  the  stimulus 
given  by  acquaintance  with  what  is  fine,  strong,  and 
lovable  in  character,  and  no  study  of  literature  is 
complete  in  which  this  stimulus  is  wanting. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER                                                                                         PAGE 
I.    A  GENERAL   SURVEY   OF  AMERICAN   LITERA 
TURE    9 

II.    WILLIAM  ELLERY  CHANNING 33 

III.  WASHINGTON  IRVING 52 

IV.  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 7° 

V.    WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 85 

VI.    WILLIAM  HICKLING  PRESCOTT 99 

VII.  TRANSCENDENTALISTS  AND  THE  TRANSCEN 
DENTAL  MOVEMENT  IN  NEW  ENGLAND,  — 
GEORGE  RIPLEY,  AMOS  BRONSON  ALCOTT, 
JONES  VERY,  SARAH  MARGARET  FULLER 

OSSOLI IJ3 

VIII.    RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 143 

IX.    NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 176 

X.    HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW     ....  198 

XI.    JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 2l6 

XII.    EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 23T 

XIII.    OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 26° 

XIV.    JOHN  LOTHROP  MOTLEY 276 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGK 

XV.    HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 286 

XVI.    JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 3IO 

XVII.    FRANCIS  PARKMAN 333 

XVIII.    LATER    WRITERS,  —  WHITMAN,    STODDARD, 

STEDMAN,  HOWELLS,  JAMES 350 


INDEX 383 


A  General  Survey  of  American 
Literature 


CHAPTER  I 

A  GENERAL  SURVEY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

TO  form  a  just  conception  of  the  comparative 
range  and  value  of  American  literature,  it  is 
necessary  to  be  acquainted  with  the  masterpieces  of 
other  national  literatures,  and  especially  with  those 
of  England,  in  whose  language  it  is  written.  There 
is  necessary,  too,  on  the  part  of  the  reader  or  thinker 
that  broad,  impartial  spirit  which  rises  above  national 
prejudices  and  loses  its  limitations  in  presence  of  the 
larger  thought  of  simple  kinship  in  humanity.  This 
spirit  is  the  outcome  of  long  and  patient  culture.  It 
is  not  allied  to  the  passionate  enthusiasms  of  youth, 
but  to  the  calm,  broad,  well-founded  judgments  of 
maturity  and  age. 

The  reader  who  brings  to  his  study  of  American 
literature  this  spirit  of  impartiality  and  a  mind  trained 
by  long  familiarity  with  foreign  classics  is  struck,  at 
first,  by  the  absence  of  supreme  excellence.  There 
is  no  name  in  American  literature  which  he  feels  he 
can  rank  with  that  of  Homer,  Goethe,  or  Shakespeare. 
Neither  can  he  find  there  the  man  of  warm,  large  life, 
the  very  bone  of  our  bone  and  flesh  of  our  flesh, 


io     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

yet  one  to  whom  the  whole  world  feels  akin,  —  the 
Burns,  the  Heine,  the  Moliere  of  his  country.  Our 
literature  lacks  the  wide  sweep,  the  uplift,  the  virility 
and  solidity  of  the  literatures  of  Europe.  To  refuse 
to  acknowledge  this  is  a  tacit  confession  of  inability 
to  recognize  excellence. 

Our  apologists  say  for  us,  "The  people  of  the 
United  States  have  had  to  act  their  Iliad  and  they 
have  n't  had  time  to  sing  it."  We  have  made  good 
use  of  this  apology,  and  have  written  with  pride  of 
felled  forests  giving  place  to  populous  cities,  of  farms 
and  fields  now  flourishing  where  buffaloes  herded  less 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  of  mountains  tun 
nelled  and  rivers  bridged,  of  our  vast  commercial 
interests  and  our  national  growth ;  but  though  deeds 
are  better  than  words,  when  words  but  stand  for  the 
deeds,  they  are  not  substitutes  for  literature,  nor,  if 
we  inquire  more  deeply,  are  they  in  reality  the  reason 
for  the  absence  of  supremely  excellent  books.  The 
burning  word  will  be  spoken,  though  gold  lie  in  the 
mines  for  the  digging  and  forests  are  to  be  felled  and 
cities  built.  "The  cheerless  gloom  of  hermit  with  the 
unceasing  toil  of  a  galley  slave  "  could  not  stifle  the 
song  on  the  lips  of  Burns.  It  never  stifled  music  on 
the  lips  of  any  born  musician.  Had  not  the  poor 
wool-comber's  son  a  fortune  to  make,  when  he  went 
up  to  London  from  Stratford,  and  held  gentlemen's 
horses  at  the  door  of  a  theatre  ?  Did  that  hinder  him, 
o  whom  all  the  world  was  a  stage,  from  seeing  a  bet 
ter  play  outside  the  door  than  the  gentleman  whose 
horse  he  held  could  ever  hope  to  see  within? 

The  truth  is  that  genius  knows  well  its  own  royalty 
by  right  of  birth,  and  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature      1 1 

cannot  tempt  it  into  silence  or  denial  of  its  right 
divine.  But  it  is  also  a  truth  that  genius  is  not  inde 
pendent  of  race,  environment,  and  political  condition, 
and  a  democracy  is  probably  that  form  of  government 
most  unfavorable  to  the  production  of  a  classical 
literature. 

A  democracy  is  based  on  the  belief  in  the  equal 
rights  of  all  mankind  and  a  faith  in  majorities.  It 
offers  a  fair  field  and  no  favors  to  all  forms  of  honor 
able  ambition  and  energy.  If  abuses  arise,  they  may 
be  redressed  at  the  ballot-box.  A  system  of  free 
public  education  opens  the  doors  of  learning  to  all 
who  wish  to  enter.  Responsibility  for  failure  in  life 
cannot  easily  be  shifted  from  the  individual  to  the 
social  institution  under  which  he  was  born.  Hence, 
in  an  ideal  democracy,  there  does  not  exist  that  rest 
lessness,  that  brooding  discontent,  that  deep,  smoth 
ered  consciousness  of  wrong  and  shame  endured  by 
toiling  millions  which  finds  eloquent  expression  in 
passionate  taunt,  pathetic  cry,  or  vivid  delineation  in 
fiction.  It  is  a  noteworthy  confirmation  of  this  fact 
that  in  so  far  as  our  country  has  ever  failed  to  reach, 
or  has  departed  from,  the  principles  of  ideal  de 
mocracy,  or  has  been  the  scene  of  wrong  and  struggle, 
it  has  furnished  material  for  eloquent  literature.  The 
Acadian  outrage  gave  birth  to  the  beautiful  idyl  of 
"  Evangeline  "  with  its  tragic  coloring.  The  struggles 
of  the  early  settlers  with  the  Indians  is  Cooper's  ter 
ritory.  The  echoes  of  the  Revolution  are  heard  in 
"  The  Spy  "  and  in  "  Paul  Revere."  The  dark  stain 
of  witchcraft  and  the  unbending  severity  of  Puritanism 
color  the  works  of  Hawthorne.  Slavery  gave  us 
Whittier's  stirring  lyrics,  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  and 


12     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Lowell's  "  Biglow  Papers "  and  "  Commemoration 
Ode."  Freedom's  voice  is  never  so  eloquent  and  far- 
reaching  as  when  it  is  heard  back  of  iron  bars.  The 
most  revolutionary  and  radical  literature  is  produced 
in  those  countries  where  the  freedom  of  the  press  is 
most  restrained  and  where  social  restrictions  are  the 
most  galling. 

Another  disadvantage  of  a  democracy  lies  in  the 
fact  that  the  temptations  to  a  comfortable  livelihood, 
and  the  ease  with  which  power  and  honor  are  ac 
quired  with  wealth,  create  a  social  atmosphere  in 
which  the  artificial  pleasures  of  civilized  life  are  sub 
stituted  for  the  simple  and  natural  pleasures  of  the 
imagination.  Few  have  the  courage  to  remain  poor 
in  a  country  where  poverty  would  seem  to  imply 
some  lack  of  thrift  and  energy,  and  therefore  few  of 
our  writers  have  devoted  themselves  exclusively  to 
literary  pursuits. 

In  no  country  in  the  world  is  the  history  of  genius 
so  comfortable  a  record  of  material  prosperity  and 
easily  won  recognition  as  it  is  in  America.  It  is  not 
the  history  of  struggle,  aspiration,  despair,  oftentimes 
life-long  defeat,  poverty,  and  woe,  followed  by  stat 
ues  and  fame  after  death.  It  is,  for  the  most  part, 
the  history  of  prosperous  doctors,  lawyers,  college 
professors,  editors,  and  public  officials,  to  whom  liter 
ature  was  not  the  first  supreme  aim,  but  an  elegant 
accomplishment  that  waited  on  bread-winning.  We 
have  no  cheery  garret  philosophers,  no  song  birds 
whose  music  is  the  sweeter  for  their  having  been 
imprisoned  in  a  darkened  cage.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  have  escaped  in  a  remarkable  degree  the 
sickly  sentimentality  of  certain  periods  of  literary 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature     13 

decadence  in  other  countries.  We  have  no  "  Rene's," 
"Werthers,"  or  "  Childe  Harolds,"  no  "Satanic 
school,"  nor,  with  the  exception  of  Charles  Brock- 
den  Browne,  Edgar  A.  Poe,  and  possibly  Hawthorne-, 
is  there  any  taint  of  morbidness  in  our  literature. 

From  the  life  of  intense  activity  in  America,  has 
sprung  a  literature  breathing  a  confident,  hopeful 
spirit,  —  the  spirit  of  youth  and  health.  It  lacks,  to 
be  sure,  what  gives  to  youth  its  charm,  —  a  strain  of 
noble  discontent  and  passionate  aspiration.  It  is 
content  with  to-day  and  trustful  of  the  future.  It 
does  not  voice  the  heart  hunger  of  the  human  race, 
nor  the  collected  wisdom  of  its  experiences.  It  does 
not  lay  bare  the  primitive  passions  of  mankind,  but 
it  speaks  to  the  prosperous,  well-educated  citizen  of 
the  world  in  the  language  of  Christian  philosophy. 
It  is  a  clean  and  wholesome  literature,  —  white 
wheaten  bread,  with  here  and  there  a  toothsome 
brown  crust. 

The  chief  writers  of  America  have  been  college- 
bred  New  England  or  Eastern  men,  and  contempo 
raries  of  the  period  of  the  Civil  War.  Among  this 
little  band  of  contemporaries,  Bryant,  Emerson, 
Lowell,  Longfellow,  Hawthorne,  Whittier,  Holmes, 
there  existed  a  warm  friendship  and  mutual  admira 
tion,  —  a  fact  to  which  we  owe  the  absence  of  any 
thing  like  critical  severity  in  their  estimates  of  one 
another's  writings.  Friendship  makes  the  best  of 
focal  distances  from  which  to  view  character,  but  the 
critic's  eye  is  far-sighted  and  needs  a  longer  range. 
Even  Coleridge,  one  of  the  acutest  of  critics,  —  a  man 
who  said  that  "  praises  of  the  unworthy  are  felt  by 
ardent  minds  as  robberies  of  the  deserving,"  —  over- 


14     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

praised  his  brother-in-law,  Southey.  But  even  when 
the  critic's  judgment  is  not  warped  by  friendship,  a 
delicate  sense  of  loyalty  to  his  friend  must  shut  his 
lips  to  any  expression  of  the  weaknesses  revealed  to 
him  by  close  companionship;  and  thus  the  very 
bond  that  makes  him  better  able  than  another  to 
pronounce  a  judgment  is  not  an  advantage  to  a 
critic,  but  rather  an  insuperable  barrier,  as  it  forbids 
him  in  honor  to  pronounce  any  verdict  if  unfavorable. 

American  criticism  has  suffered  unavoidably  from 
this  circumstance  of  mutual  friendship,  for  it  has 
consisted  chiefly  of  indiscriminate  and  extravagant 
laudation.  In  the  keen  but  kindly  character  sketches 
of  Lowell's  "  Fable  for  Critics  "  we  have  a  hint  of 
what  he  was  capable  of  doing  in  the  criticism  of 
American  literature  had  not  friendship  tied  his  tongue 
and  thrown  shining  dust  in  his  eyes.  Edgar  A.  Poe 
was  deterred  by  no  such  scruples,  but  he  lacked  the 
first  requisite  of  a  great  critic,  —  susceptibility  to 
excellences  as  well  as  the  quick  perception  of  faults. 
To  him  a  critic  was  simply  a  scourger  of  literary 
offenders.  Therefore  we  have  no  criticism  of  Amer 
ican  literature  by  native  writers  which  will  stand  the 
test  of  time  and  satisfy  the  verdict  of  posterity. 

Before  proceeding  further,  it  is  well  to  understand 
what  we  mean  by  "  polite  literature."  We  must  not 
confound  what  DeQuincey  calls  "  knowledge-liter 
ature  "  and  "  power-literature,"  the  literature  that 
simply  teaches  and  the  literature  that  moves.  We 
restrict  the  term  "  literature "  to  that  which  brings 
the  feelings  into  play,  moving  us  not  so  much  by 
appeals  to  our  reason  as  to  our  sympathy  and  imagi 
nation.  "  The  circle  of  human  nature,"  says  John 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature      15 

Tyndall,  the  eminent  scientist,  "  is  not  complete 
without  the  arc  of  the  emotions.  The  lilies  of  the 
field  have  a  value  for  us  beyond  the  botanical  ones, 
—  a  certain  lightening  of  the  heart  accompanies  the 
declaration  that  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not 
arrayed  like  one  of  these.  The  sound  of  the  village 
bell  has  a  value  beyond  its  acoustical  one.  The  set 
ting  sun  has  a  value  beyond  its  optical  one.  The 
starry  heavens,  as  you  know,  had  for  Immanuel  Kant 
a  value  beyond  their  astronomical  one."  It  is  this 
"  value  beyond "  the  purely  practical  and  sense- 
apparent  one  in  all  things  with  which  literature  is 
concerned.  This  definition  properly  excludes  the 
writings  that  belong  to  the  departments  of  law,  poli 
tics,  theology,  science,  history,  and  metaphysics; 
yet  there  are  cases  in  which  a  great  imaginative 
genius  treats  a  didactic  subject  with  so  much  original 
power  and  enthusiasm,  —  so  permeates  it  with  his 
own  striking  individuality  that  he  lifts  it  to  the  rank 
of  pure  literature.  He  moves  while  he  instructs.  To 
such  works  belong  the  sermons  of  Jeremy  Taylor, 
the  essays  of  Bacon,  the  criticisms  of  Sainte  Beuve, 
the  histories  of  Carlyle,  and,  though  in  lesser  degree, 
the  histories  of  our  American  writers,  Prescott,  Mot 
ley,  and  Parkman. 

With  this  definition  in  mind,  we  can  easily  see  why 
we  must  exclude,  in  our  study  of  American  literature, 
Jonathan  Edwards,  who  is  our  most  distinguished 
metaphysician,  and  Benjamin  Franklin,  probably  the 
man  of  largest  mind  that  America  has  as  yet  pro 
duced.  The  former  devoted  his  genius  to  a  field  of 
thought  largely  speculative,  and  unprofitable  for  our 
purpose ;  while  science,  in  its  purely  instructive  form, 


1 6     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

was  properly  the  domain  of  the  latter.  Neither  can 
be  rightly  regarded  as  a  representative  of  polite 
literature. 

The  gloomy  theology  of  the  Puritans  reflected  in 
their  books  belongs  to  a  form  of  thought  irrevocably 
past,  and  they,  too,  must  be  excluded  from  a  title  to 
consideration  as  contributors  to  American  literature. 
Cotton  Mather,  their  most  distinguished  representa 
tive,  was  a  firm  believer  in  witchcraft,  and  crowds  his 
book  "  Magnalia  Christi  Americana"  (The  Mighty 
Works  of  Christ  in  America)  with  absurd  and  disgust 
ing  stories  that  have  no  value  or  interest  beyond  that 
of  exciting  pity  and  wonder  at  the  credulity  of  the 
human  mind.  Here  and  there  a  fine  sentence  flashes 
out  like  the  gleam  of  a  jewel  in  a  rubbish  heap,  as 
when  he  says  of  John  Eliot,  the  apostle  to  the  Indians : 
"  He  had  a  particular  art  of  spiritualizing  of  earthly 
objects  and  raising  of  high  thoughts  from  very  mean 
things ;  "  but  there  are  too  few  of  such  jewels  to 
reward  a  long  search  through  so  much  dust  and 
rubbish. 

Jonathan  Edwards,  whose  book,  "  The  Freedom  of 
the  Will,"  is  oftener  spoken  of  than  read,  was  a  close, 
acute  reasoner  from  narrow  premises.  He  argues 
that  as  the  will  is  "that  by  which  the  mind  chuses 
anything,"  and  as  the  strongest  motive  always  deter 
mines  the  choice,  therefore  the  will  cannot  possibly 
be  free.  "  The  will,"  he  says,  "  always  is  as  the 
greatest  apparent  good  is.  ...  The  will  don't  act  in 
indifference ;  not  so  much  as  in  the  first  step  it  takes, 
or  the  first  rise  and  beginning  of  its  acting.  If  it  be 
possible  for  the  understanding  to  act  in  indifference, 
yet  be .  sure  the  will  never  does ;  because  the  will's 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature     17 

beginning  to  act  is  the  very  same  thing  as  its  begin 
ning  to  chuse  or  prefer." 

The  Revolutionary  period  of  our  history  produced 
orations  and  political  essays  of  notable  vigor.  The 
most  famous  of  these  essays  are  Paine's  "  Crisis  "  and 
"  Common  Sense,"  and  a  series  of  eighty-five  essays 
entitled  collectively  "  The  Federalist,"  written  by 
Alexander  Hamilton,  James  Madison,  and  John  Jay. 
The  "  Federalist "  essays  first  appeared  in  the  news 
papers  of  their  day,  and  were  first  published  in  book 
form  in  1788.  The  essays  were  written  to  interpret 
the  new  constitution  of  the  United  States  to  the 
people,  and  to  create  a  feeling  in  favor  of  its  adoption, 
which  they  ultimately  did.  The  dangers  of  disunion 
from  the  arms  of  foreign  nations  and  the  effects  of 
union  upon  commercial  prosperity  were  ably  dwelt 
on.  "  It  has  been  said,"  says  C.  D.  Warner,  "  and  I 
think  the  statement  can  be  maintained,  that  for  any 
parallel  to  those  treatises  on  the  nature  of  govern 
ment,  in  respect  to  originality  and  vigor,  we  must  go 
back  to  classic  times."  But  fine  and  vigorous  as 
these  essays  are,  the  study  of  them  properly  belongs 
to  political  history  and  not  to  belles-lettres. 

Our  first  novelist,  Charles  Brockden  Browne,  born 
in  Philadelphia  in  1771,  published  his  first  novel, 
"  Wieland,"  in  1798.  Of  a  sickly  constitution,  suf 
fering  all  his  life  from  acute  attacks  of  nervous  head 
ache,  dying  before  he  had  finished  his  fortieth  year, 
his  thought  shared  the  morbid  habit  of  his  body. 
"  When  have  I  known,"  he  writes  to  a  friend  in  his 
thirty-ninth  year,  —  "  when  have  I  known  that  light 
ness  and  vivacity  of  mind  which  the  divine  flow  of 
health  even  in  calamity  produces  in  some  men? 


1 8      A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Never !  scarcely  ever  !  Not  longer  than  half  an  hour 
since  I  have  called  myself  man." 

Browne's  novels  are  revolting  in  their  persistent 
accumulation  of  horror  upon  horror,  unrelieved  by 
any  graces  of  style  or  skilful  character  drawing.  His 
abrupt  and  stilted  language  abounds  in  awkward 
inversions;  he  has  neither  humor  nor  pathos;  his 
world  is  a  Bluebeard  chamber  of  horrors,  and  his 
characters  are  its  victims.  He  is  no  longer  read,  nor 
is  it  probable  that  he  ever  will  be  read  so  long  as 
men  seek  in  books  what  profits  or  delights  them. 

The  profitable  study  of  American  literature  may 
be  said  to  begin  with  those  of  our  writers  who  first 
acquired  international  renown  by  books  that  deserve 
to  be  remembered  and  read.  These  writers,  in  the 
order  of  their  birth,  are :  William  Ellery  Channing 
(1780),  Washington  Irving  (1783),  James  Fenimore 
Cooper  (1789),  William  Cullen  Bryant  (1794),  and 
William  Hickling  Prescott  (1796).  Born  within  the 
last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  works  of 
these  writers  belong  to  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

Our  next  group  of  chief  writers  clusters  around 
the  Civil  War,  and  consists  of  Bancroft,  Emerson, 
Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Poe,  Holmes,  Mot 
ley,  Thoreau,  Lowell,  and  Parkman.  Bancroft,  the 
eldest  of  this  group,  was  born  in  1800;  Parkman,  the 
youngest,  in  1823.  American  literature,  therefore,  is 
a  nineteenth-century  product.  If  we  except  Jonathan 
Edwards's  "  Freedom  of  the  Will,"  published  in  1754, 
and  Benjamin  Franklin's  "  Autobiography,"  finished 
in  1788,  but  not  published  till  1817,  the  eighteenth 
century  produced  no  noteworthy  book  in  America. 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature      19 

Yet  it  was  the  century  that  gave  to  English  literature 
Pope,  Swift,  Addison,  Steele,  Johnson,  Goldsmith, 
Gray,  Cowper,  Thomson,  Sterne,  Gibbon,  Robertson, 
Crabbe,  Burns,  and  a  host  of  inferior  writers. 

Benjamin  Franklin's  "Autobiography"  and  his 
"  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  "  deserve  more  than  a  mere 
passing  mention;  indeed,  their  excellence  in  their 
own  way  is  so  undeniable  that  it  furnishes  reason  to 
many  for  including  Franklin  among  our  great  men  of 
letters.  But  if  we  recall  our  definition  of  literature,  — • 
if  we  believe  that  at  its  best  it  is  not  purely  didactic, 
that  it  speaks,  as  DeQuincey  says,  "  to  the  higher 
understanding  of  reason,  but  always  through  affections 
of  pleasure  and  sympathy ;  "  that  it  "  does  and  must 
operate  through  the  humid  light  which  clothes  itself 
in  the  mists  and  glittering  iris  of  human  passions,  de 
sires,  and  genial  emotions ;  "  that  it  "  can  teach  only 
as  nature  teaches,  as  forests  teach,  as  the  sea  teaches, 
namely,  by  deep  impulse,  by  hieroglyphic  suggestion ; " 
that  this  teaching  "  is  not  direct,  explicit,  but  lurking, 
implicit,  masked  in  deep  incarnations;" — if  we  be 
lieve  this,  there  is  no  question  that  the  character  of 
Franklin's  work  excludes  him  from  this  classification. 

Franklin's  Muse  has  no  wings;  she  never  leaves 
the  earth ;  she  wears  the  form  of  the  careful  house 
wife,  and  always  "  brings  her  knitting  in  her  pocket," 
to  use  Lowell's  happy  phrase.  She  knows  the  state 
of  the  market  and  the  road  to  wealth  by -the  way  of 
thrift  and  prudence.  She  is  sagacious,  with  all  the 
shrewdness  and  experience  of  the  successful  business 
man,  and  her  utterances  are  the  collected  wisdom  of 
the  world  of  trade. 

Franklin  is  the  ideal  self-made  man,  and  the  incar- 


io     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

nation  of  common  sense.  Born  in  Boston  on  the 
seventeenth  of  January,  1706;  leaving  school  at  the 
age  of  ten  to  help  his  father,  a  candle-maker  and  soap 
boiler  ;  apprenticed  to  his  brother,  a  printer,  at  twelve, 
and  running  away  at  seventeen  to  escape  further  ill- 
treatment  ;  turning  up  in  Philadelphia,  dirty  from  his 
journey,  his  pockets  "  stuffed  out  with  shirts  and 
stockings,"  fatigued  and  hungry,  his  whole  stock  of 
cash  one  Dutch  dollar,  but  with  indomitable  pluck  in 
his  nature,  and  youth  and  strength  to  serve  it;  turn 
ing  his  hand  to  whatever  he  could  find  to  do ;  making 
friends  by  his  diligence,  thrift,  courtesy,  and  quick 
mind  eager  to  know;  going  to  London  in  his  nine 
teenth  year  to  better  his  fortune,  and  lodging  in  Little 
Britain  with  a  companion  at  three  and  sixpence  a 
week ;  returning  to  America  after  the  varied  experi 
ences  of  eighteen  months;  marrying  Deborah  Read 
in  1730,  and  thereafter  applying  himself  so  diligently 
to  business  that  at  the  age  of  forty-two  he  could  retire 
with  a  competency  and  devote  his  leisure  to  scientific 
investigations;  taking  part  in  the  political  affairs  of 
his  country,  bearing  its  honors  with  modesty  and 
dignity  abroad,  and  standing  before  kings ;  dying  on 
the  seventeenth  of  April,  1790,  full  of  years  and 
honors,  with  troops  of  friends  and  a  record  of  services 
that  will  keep  his  name  living  while  the  world  lasts ;  — 
this  is,  in  brief,  the  story  of  Franklin's  life.  It  is  a 
story  much  of  which  he  has  told  in  detail  and  with 
charming  simplicity  in  his  famous  "  Autobiography." 
But  the  value  of  the  book  is  not  in  its  manner,  it  is  in 
its  matter.  This  record  of  a  life  so  successful  in  every 
way  and  so  cheerfully  happy  that  Franklin  could  say 
of  it  he  would  have  no  objection  to  a  repetition  of  it 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature     21 

from  the  beginning,  is  quite  unequalled  as  a  picture  of 
sturdy  self-reliance,  self-control,  and  hard  work  will 
ingly  done.  It  wholly  deserves  the  popularity  it  has, 
and  should  be  in  the  library  of  every  young  man  who 
aspires  to  make  something  of  himself. 

Franklin  first  began  the  publication  of  "  Poor 
Richard's  Almanac  "  in  1732,  and  continued  it  about 
twenty-five  years.  It  was  a  comic  almanac,  and  its 
humorous  prefaces  and  quaint  bits  of  worldly  wisdom 
soon  made  it  immensely  popular.  Franklin  makes 
Poor  Richard  say  of  himself  in  the  Almanac  for  1734: 

"  I'm  not  High  Church  nor  Low  Church,  nor  Tory  nor  Whig, 
No  flatt'ring  young  coxcomb  nor  formal  old  Prig, 
Not  eternally  talking  nor  silently  quaint, 
No  profligate  sinner  nor  pragmatical  saint. 
I  'm  not  vain  of  my  judgment,  nor  pinn'd  on  a  sleeve, 
Nor  implicitly  anything  can  I  believe. 
To  sift  truth  from  all  rubbish,  I  do  what  I  can, 
And,  God  knows  if  I  err  —  I'm  a  fallible  man." 

This  sifting  of  truth  from  all  rubbish  was  the  chief 
concern  of  Franklin's  life. 

The  verses  scattered  throughout  his  Almanac  were 
not  always  original,  any  more  than  the  proverbs  in  it. 
The  latter,  he  said,  "  contained  the  wisdom  of  many 
ages  and  nations,"  and  of  the  former  he  wrote :  — 

"  I  know  as  well  as  thee  that  I  am  no  poet  born,  and  it  is 
a  trade  I  never  learnt  nor  indeed  could  learn.  .  .  .  Why, 
then,  should  I  give  my  readers  bad  lines  when  good  ones  of 
other  people  are  so  plenty  ?  ?T  is,  methinks,  a  poor  excuse 
for  the  bad  entertainment  of  guests  that  the  food  we  set 
before  them,  tho'  coarse  and  ordinary,  is  '  of  one's  own  rat's- 
ingi  off  one's  own  plantation'  etc.,  when  there  is  plenty  ol 
what  is  ten  times  better  to  be  had  in  the  market." 


22     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

But  the  verses,  like  the  proverbs,  were  all  well 
chosen  to  one  end,  —  that  of  impressing  upon  his 
readers  the  importance  of  frugality,  diligence,  pru 
dence,  and  virtue.  They  are  what  he  said  they  were : 
"  scraps  from  the  table  of  wisdom  that  will,  if  well 
digested,  yield  strong  nourishment  to  the  mind." 
They  flew  far  and  wide ;  they  lodged  in  the  memory 
of  thousands,  and  were  repeated  by  young  and  old ; 
and  they  inculcated  those  lessons  of  self-help  which 
lie  at  the  root  of  the  greatness  of  nations  as  well  as  of 
individuals.  Among  the  best  and  most  familiar  are 
the  following :  — 

Early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise,  makes  a  man  healthy  and 
wealthy  and  wise. 

Eat  to  live,  and  not  live  to  eat. 

Great  talkers,  little  doers. 

God  gives  all  things  to  industry. 

Diligence  is  the  mother  of  good  luck. 

God  helps  them  that  help  themselves. 

Forewarned,  forearmed. 

He  that  can  have  patience  can  have  what  he  will. 

If  you  have  time,  don't  wait  for  time. 

Have  you  somewhat  to  do  to-morrow,  do  it  to-day. 

The  noblest  question  in  the  world  is,*  What  good  may  I 
do  in  it? 

He  that  pays  for  work  before  it 's  done,  has  but  a  penny 
worth  for  twopence. 

If  you  'd  have  a  servant  that  you  like,  serve  yourself. 

Make  haste  slowly. 

Beware  of  little  expenses,  a  small  leak  will  sink  a  great  ship. 

When  the  well 's  dry  we  know  the  worth  of  water. 

Be  always  ashamed  to  catch  thyself  idle. 

Experience  keeps  a  dear  school,  but  fools  will  learn  in 
no  other. 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature     23 

Wars  bring  scars. 

Grace  thou  thy  house,  let  not  that  grace  thee. 

A  man  without  ceremony  has  need  of  great  merit  in  its 
place. 

He  that  scatters  thorns,  let  him  not  go  barefoot. 

God  heals,  and  the  doctor  takes  the  fees. 

Love,  cough,  and  a  smoke  can't  well  be  hid. 

The  use  of  money  is  all  the  advantage  there  is  in  having 
money. 

He  that  can  take  rest  is  greater  than  he  that  can  take 
cities. 

Grief  often  treads  upon  the  heels  of  pleasure. 
Married  in  haste,  we  oft  repent  at  leisure. 

Fish  and  visitors  smell  in  three  days. 

He  that  would  catch  fish  must  venture  his  bait 

If  you  would  be  loved,  love,  and  be  lovable. 

The  diligent  spinner  has  a  large  shift. 

There  's  a  time  to  wink  as  well  as  to  see. 

The  tongue  is  ever  turning  to  the  aching  tooth. 

The  muses  love  the  morning. 

If  Jack 's  in  love,  he  's  no  judge  of  Jill's  beauty. 

A  good  example  is  the  best  sermon. 

Life  with  fools  consists  in  drinking ;  with  the  wise  man, 
living 's  thinking. 

Clean  your  fingers  before  you  point  at  my  spots. 

Little  strokes  fell  great  oaks. 

Love  your  neighbor,  yet  don't  pull  down  your  hedge. 

In  the  affairs  of  this  world,  men  are  saved  not  by  faith, 
but  by  the  want  of  it. 

If  man  could  have  half  he  wishes,  he  would  double  his 
trouble. 

Generous  minds  are  all  of  kin. 

Constant  dropping  wears  away  stones. 

Love  and  toothache  have  many  cures,  but  none  infallible 
except  possession  and  dispossession. 


24     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Sloth,  like  rust,  consumes  faster  than  labor  wears,  while 
the  used  key  is  always  bright. 

There  are  no  gains  without  pains. 

Three  removes  are  as  bad  as  a  fire. 

If  you  would  have  your  business  done,  go  !  if  not,  send  ! 

Dost  thou  love  life?  Then  do  not  squander  time,  for 
that 's  the  stuff  life  is  made  of. 

Franklin's  mind  was  remarkable  for  its  assimilative 
power ;  the  range  of  his  love  of  knowledge  knew  no 
limits.  He  had  a  great  fondness  for  music,  and  in 
vented  an  instrument,  on  the  principle  of  musical 
glasses,  which  he  called  the  "  Armonica."  He  dis 
covered  the  fact  of  the  identity  of  lightning  and 
electricity,  and  invented  the  lightning-rod.  He  in 
vented  a  stove,  and  declined  to  take  out  a  patent  for 
it,  on  the  principle  that  "  as  we  enjoy  great  advan 
tages  from  the  inventions  of  others,  we  should  be 
glad  to  serve  others  by  any  invention  of  ours ;  and 
this  we  should  do  freely  and  generously."  He  de 
lighted  in  natural  history,  and  had  the  widest  curiosity 
concerning  plants  and  animals,  and  is  said  to  have 
introduced  the  yellow  willow  into  this  country  from 
a  sprouting  slip  from  a  wicker  basket  of  foreign 
make  which  he  saw  lying  in  a  ditch.  For  his  valu 
able  experiments  and  discoveries  in  electrical  science 
he  was  made  a  member  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
England,  and  received  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws 
from  the  universities  of  St.  Andrews  and  Oxford. 
During  his  residence  in  France  as  minister  from  the 
United  States,  he  was  appointed  by  the  French  king 
one  of  the  commissioners  to  investigate  the  subject  of 
animal  magnetism,  which  was  just  then  exciting  a 
great  deal  of  attention  from  the  claims  of  Mesmer 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature     25 

and  his  credulous  adherents.  Franklin's  coolness 
and  common  sense  may  be  seen  in  the  following 
statement :  — 

"  As  to  the  animal  magnetism  so  much  talked  of,  I  must 
doubt  its  existence  till  I  can  see  and  feel  some  effect  of  it. 
None  of  the  cures  said  to  be  performed  by  it  have  fallen 
under  my  observation,  and  there  are  so  many  disorders 
which  cure  themselves,  and  such  a  disposition  in  mankind 
to  deceive  themselves  and  one  another  on  these  occasions, 
and  living  long  has  given  me  so  frequent  opportunities  of 
seeing  certain  remedies  cried  up  as  curing  everything  and 
yet  soon  after  totally  laid  aside  as  useless,  I  cannot  but  fear 
that  the  expectation  of  great  advantages  from  this  new 
method  of  treating  diseases  will  prove  a  delusion.  That 
delusion  may,  however,  and  in  some  cases,  be  of  use  while 
it  lasts.  There  are  in  every  great,  rich  city  a  number  of 
persons  who  are  never  in  health,  because  they  are  fond  of 
medicines  and  always  taking  them,  whereby  they  derange 
their  natural  functions  and  hurt  their  constitutions.  If  these 
people  can  be  persuaded  to  forbear  their  drugs  in  expecta 
tion  of  being  cured  by  only  the  physician's  finger  or  an  iron 
rod  pointing  at  them,  they  may  possibly  find  good  effects 
though  they  may  mistake  the  cause." 

Among  many  friends  whom  Franklin  made  in 
France  were  the  celebrities,  Turgot,  Buffon,  D'Alem- 
bert,  Condorcet,  La  Rochefoucauld,  and  he  had  the 
pleasure  of  meeting  the  great  satirist  Voltaire. 

Franklin  was  not  only  interested  in  science,  but  in 
whatever  tends  to  the  comfort  and  enlightenment  of 
humanity.  He  was  the  first  to  suggest  the  forming 
of  fire-companies ;  the  first  to  found  a  public  sub 
scription  library  in  North  America ;  the  first  to  call 
attention  to  the  necessity  of  better  systems  of  street 


26     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

lighting  and  cleaning.  He  served  on  school  com 
mittees.  His  own  education  had  been  acquired  with 
out  direction,  and  the  suggestions  he  had  to  offer  on 
educational  questions  were  practical  and  original. 
He  had  taught  himself  Latin,  French,  Italian,  and 
Spanish.  He  had  drilled  himself  in  composition,  and 
knew  the  value  of  terse,  clear  English.  In  his  sketch 
of  the  work  for  an  English  School  in  Philadelphia, 
he  insists  that  particular  care  be  taken  to  make  good 
spellers  of  the  lowest  class,  declaring  it  a  "  shame 
for  a  man  to  be  so  ignorant  of  this  little  art  in  his 
own  language  as  to  be  perpetually  confounding 
words  of  like  sound  and  different  significations." 
This  drill  is  to  be  followed  in  successive  terms  by 
drill  in  speaking  properly  and  gracefully;  drill  in 
composition  to  be  taught  by  putting  the  boys  to 
writing  letters  to  each  other  on  various  subjects, 
imaginary  business,  discussions  of  what  they  read 
or  see,  etc. ;  drill  in  paraphrasing,  amplifying,  and 
abridgment  of  fine  passages;  and,  lastly,  reading 
and  discussion  of  the  best  English  authors,  whom  he 
enumerates  as  "  Tillotson,  Milton,  Locke,  Addison, 
Pope,  Swift,"  and  adds  for  study  "  papers  in  the 
1  Spectator '  or  '  Guardian ;  '  the  best  translations  of 
Homer,  Virgil,  Horace,  Telemachus,  Travels  of 
Cyrus,  etc."  By  such  a  course  he  thinks  the  pupils 
"  will  come  out  of  this  school,  though  unacquainted 
with  any  ancient  or  foreign  tongue,  masters  of  their 
own."  Such  a  mastery  he  valued  very  highly,  and 
thought  too  much  attention  was  given  to  the  ancient 
languages  at  the  expense  of  modern  tongues.  "  He 
said,"  reports  the  historian,  Jared  Sparks,  "  that 
when  the  custom  of  wearing  broad  cuffs  with  buttons 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature     27 

first  began,  there  was  reason  for  it,  the  cuffs  might 
be  brought  down  over  the  hands,  and  thus  guard 
them  from  wet  and  cold.  But  gloves  came  into  use, 
and  broad  cuffs  were  unnecessary;  yet  the  custom 
was  still  retained.  So  likewise  with  cocked  hats; 
the  wide  brim  when  let  down  afforded  protection 
from  the  rain  and  sun.  Umbrellas  were  introduced, 
yet  fashion  prevailed  to  keep  cocked  hats  in  vogue, 
although  they  were  rather  cumbersome  than  useful. 
Thus  with  the  Latin  language.  When  nearly  all  the 
books  in  Europe  were  written  in  that  language,  the 
study  of  it  was  essential  in  every  system  of  education ; 
but  it  is  now  scarcely  needed  except  as  an  accom 
plishment,  since  it  has  everywhere  given  place,  as  a 
vehicle  of  thought  and  knowledge,  to  some  one  of 
the  modern  tongues." 

Franklin's  own  mastery  of  his  native  tongue  is  ad 
mirable.  He  never  uses  a  long  word  when  a  short 
one  will  do  as  well ;  nor  does  he  add  an  extra  word 
for  the  sake  of  emphasis  when  his  meaning  is  clear 
without  it.  He  never  tries  to  say  what  he  does  not 
see  clearly ;  he  never  ventures  where  he  cannot  walk 
securely.  He  is  shrewdly  humorous,  and  clenches  his 
arguments  with  some  apt  and  lively  though  homely 
illustration  drawn  directly  from  his  own  observation. 
For  example,  in  an  essay  designed  to  show  the  nature 
of  fault-finders  and  the  discomfort  arising  from  asso 
ciation  with  them,  he  says :  — 

"  An  old  philosophical  friend  of  mine  was  grown  from  ex 
perience  very  cautious  in  this  particular,  and  carefully  avoided 
any  intimacy  with  such  people.  He  had,  like  other  philoso 
phers,  a  thermometer  to  show  him  the  heat  of  the  weather, 
and  a  barometer  to  mark  when  it  was  good  or  bad;  but 


28      A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

there  being  no  instrument  to  discover  at  first  sight  the  un- 
pleasing  disposition  of  a  person,  he  for  that  purpose  made 
use  of  his  legs,  one  of  which  was  remarkably  handsome,  the 
other  by  some  accident  crooked  and  deformed.  If  a 
stranger  at  the  first  interview  regarded  his  ugly  leg  more 
than  the  handsome  one,  he  doubted  him.  If  he  spoke  of  it 
and  took  no  notice  of  the  handsome  leg,  that  was  sufficient 
to  determine  my  philosopher  to  have  no  further  acquaintance 
with  him.  Everybody  has  not  this  two-legged  instrument, 
but  every  one  with  a  little  attention  may  observe  signs  of 
that  carping,  fault-finding  disposition,  and  take  the  same 
resolution  of  avoiding  the  acquaintance  of  those  infected 
with  it.  I,  therefore,  advise  those  critical,  querulous,  dis 
contented,  unhappy  people,  that  if  they  wish  to  be  respected 
and  beloved  by  others  and  happy  in  themselves,  they  should 
leave  off  looking  at  the  ugly  leg." 

Franklin's  knowledge  of  men  was  very  profound, 
his  observation  close.  "  The  most  trifling  actions  of  a 
man,  in  my  opinion,  as  well  as  the  smallest  lineaments 
of  his  face,  give  a  nice  observer  some  notions  of  his 
mind,"  he  says.  Yet  he  deals  with  men  only  on  the 
practical  side.  He  ignores  wholly  the  world  of  senti 
ment,  imagination,  and  passion.  Of  ideality  he  had 
not  a  trace ;  he  trusted  his  senses  and  lived  in  them 
soberly,  cheerfully,  happily.  He  rarely  went  to 
church,  and  Sunday  was  his  day  of  study;  but  though 
he  doubted  the  divinity  of  Christ,  he  believed  in  im 
mortality  and  in  God,  and  that  "  the  most  acceptable 
service  we  can  render  to  Him  is  to  do  good  to  His 
other  children." 

He  was  about  five  feet  nine  or  ten  inches  in  height, 
and  grew  stout  as  he  grew  older.  His  complexion 
was  fair,  his  eyes  gray ;  his  manner,  dress,  and  speech 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature     29 

plain  and  pleasing.  He  suffered  very  much  from  gout 
in  later  life,  but  was  uniformly  cheerful,  and  retained 
his  faculties  unimpaired  to  the  last.  He  made  himself 
famous  in  many  ways :  he  was  statesman,  political 
economist,  scientist,  public  speaker,  and  man  of  let 
ters  ;  and  though  the  character  of  his  mind  and  his 
studies  make  him  first  of  all  a  man  of  science,  he  has 
lived  close  to  the  heart  of  every  succeeding  generation 
as  the  author  of  "  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  "  and  an 
incomparable  Autobiography. 

Franklin  is  often  cited  as  a  "  typical  American ;  " 
it  would  be  better  to  say  that  he  is  the  world's  best 
type  of  good  sense.  He  belongs  to  us  exclusively 
no  more  than  Socrates  belongs  exclusively  to  the 
Greeks,  or  Montaigne  to  the  French.  A  man  is  great, 
not  in  proportion  to  what  he  reflects  of  national 
peculiarities,  but  in  proportion  to  what  he  reflects  of 
the  whole  human  race ;  and  Franklin  reflects  the 
homely  instincts  and  common  sense  of  civilized 
mankind. 

The  phrase  "  a  typical  American  "  is  so  great  a 
favorite  among  our  lesser  critics  that  it  is  impossible 
to  read  their  eulogy  of  our  distinguished  writers  with 
out  encountering  it  in  some  form  not  once  but  many 
times.  It  is  a  well-worn  standard  coin  of  literary 
criticism,  and  passes  from  hand  to  hand  without 
question.  It  is  well  to  examine  it  in  order  to  find 
out  just  what  it  is  worth.  It  undoubtedly  originated 
in  answer  to  the  charge  so  frequently  and  senselessly 
brought  against  American  literature,  namely,  that  it 
lacks  a  distinctively  national  spirit,  and  that  the 
influence  of  English  models  can  be  clearly  traced 
in  it. 


30     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Washington  Irving  reminds  the  English  reader  of 
Addison.  Bryant  is  the  American  Wordsworth; 
Cooper,  the  American  Scott.  Motley  savors  of  Car- 
lyle  to  those  who  read  only  the  headings  of  his  chap 
ters  and  the  running  titles  of  his  pages ;  Emerson  is 
the  American  Carlyle ;  Longfellow's  "  Hiawatha  "  has 
no  flavor  of  the  national  soil,  but  might  as  well  have 
been  written  within  sound  of  the  chimes  of  St.  Paul. 
In  short,  grumbles  the  critic,  these  Americans  act, 
think,  talk,  and  write  as  their  Christian  brethren,  the 
British  Islanders.  To  which  we  reply,  Why  not  ? 
Literature  is  not  a  growth  of  the  soil,  like  potatoes 
and  Indian  corn ;  it  is  a  growth  of  feeling  and  under 
standing,  and  when  men  love  and  laugh,  weep  and 
\vork,  think  and  hope,  in  a  different  manner  on  the 
banks  of  the  Hudson  from  what  they  do  on  the  banks 
of  the  Thames,  we  shall  have  a  wholly  different  order 
of  facts  and  feelings,  and  a  distinctively  national 
manner  of  recording  them.  But  when  we  do  become 
thus  differentiated  from  our  kind,  we  shall  produce  a 
literature  that  nobody  but  ourselves  will  understand, 
enjoy,  or  care  to  read,  because  it  is  the  oneness  of 
humanity,  the  fundamental  kinship  of  all  nations 
recognized  in  literature,  that  makes  its  enduring  value 
and  its  international  fame. 

When  Ben  Jonson  sang  of  Shakespeare,  "  He  was 
not  of  our  age,  but  for  all  time,"  he  uttered  the  epit 
ome  of  all  literary  praise.  Had  Shakespeare  been 
nothing  but  an  English  poet  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
he  would  never  be  the  poet  of  all  mankind  for  all 
centuries.  It  is,  therefore,  no  discredit  to  our  Ameri 
can  writers,  but  rather  the  highest  praise  of  them, 
that  they  do  not  exclusively  voice  America,  but 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature     3 1 

speak  intelligently  to  England  and  other  European 
nations;  and  our  critics  who  in  jealousy  of  our 
national  honor  proclaim  of  any  given  poet  or  novelist 
that  he  is  "  intensely  and  distinctively  American," 
hoping  thereby  to  give  him  the  highest  praise,  in 
reality  proclaim  the  limitations  and  not  the  univer 
sality  of  his  genius.  Burns  is  not  "  intensely  and 
distinctively  "  Scottish,  but  intensely  and  distinctively 
natural  and  human ;  Goethe  is  not  a  typical  German, 
but  the  world's  most  finished  type  of  nineteenth-cen 
tury  culture.  Byron  is  by  no  means  a  representative 
Englishman,  but  he  stands  for  the  restless  activity  of 
his  age,  its  skepticism,  its  fierce  revolt  against  con 
ventionalities,  and  its  insatiable  hunger  for  happiness. 

However,  to  speak  with  strict  exactness,  there  is,  to 
the  acute  and  quickly  perceptive  mind,  a  very  appar 
ent  national  tone  in  our  literature  to  which  I  have 
already  alluded ;  namely,  a  thoroughgoing  optimism, 
an  absolute  confidence  in  the  future,  and  a  healthy 
joy  in  life,  that  are  singularly  at  variance  with  the  pes 
simistic  note  of  certain  writers  in  other  countries. 

Contrast,  for  example,  the  attitude  of  Carlyle  with 
that  of  Emerson.  Friends  and  contemporaries,  ear 
nest  seekers  of  truth  and  haters  of  cant,  both  of  them ; 
but  the  one,  always  "  sunk  in  the  bowels  of  chaos," 
utters  his  scorn  of  vice  and  folly,  his  impatience  and 
despair,  in  words  that  burn  and  corrode  like  fire  or 
acid ;  the  other,  with  the  mild  serenity  of  a  Hindoo 
sage,  looks  out  on  a  world  all  light  and  slow,  unceas 
ing  growth  toward  perfection,  pronounces  it  good, 
and  is  content  to  bide  its  time. 

If  in  this  deep  and  steady  faith  in  the  ultimate 
victory  of  good  over  evil,  —  a  faith  that  never  fal- 


32      A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

tered  in  our  best  men  even  when  the  nation  was  con 
vulsed  by  civil  war,  our  foreign  critics  do  not  discern 
the  national  spirit,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  they  utterly 
misconceive  it.  An  invincible  good-nature  character 
izes  us  as  a  nation  and  pervades  our  literature.  Even 
satire,  which  has  been  a  scourge  in  the  hands  of  Swift, 
Voltaire,  Heine,  has  never  been  more  than  a  lithe, 
tingling  birchen  rod  in  America.  Our  humor  is 
broad  and  kindly,  but  lacks  the  mellow  Elian  flavor 
and  the  exquisite  keenness  and  delicacy  of  French 
wit.  A  sturdy  good  sense  and  practical  shrewdness 
are  other  elements  of  our  literature.  One  other  indis 
putable  quality  it  possesses,  and  that  is  purity.  With 
the  exception  of  Walt  Whitman,  there  is  no  American 
writer  of  note  who  would  need  to  be  edited  for  schools 
in  an  expurgated  edition. 

Hawthorne  is  the  writer  to  whom  we  can  most  con 
fidently  point  when  the  question  of  original  genius  is  at 
stake.  Emerson  is  our  broadest  thinker,  Longfellow 
our  most  popular  poet,  Lowell  our  acutest  critic,  and 
Motley  and  Parkman  are  our  best  historians. 


CHAPTER   II 

WILLIAM   ELLERY  CHANNING   (1780-1842) 

WILLIAM    ELLERY   CHANNING,   the   lead 
ing   Unitarian    divine    of  America,    says,    in 
his   remarks    on    the    "  Character    and   Writings   of 
Fe"nelon  " :  — 

"  It  is  too  true,  and  a  sad  truth,  that  religious  books  are 
pre-eminently  dull.  If  we  wished  to  impoverish  a  man's 
intellect,  we  could  devise  few  means  more  effectual  than 
to  confine  him  to  what  is  called  a  course  of  theological 
reading." 

Had  Channing's  own  works  in  any  degree  deserved 
this  charge  of  theological  dulness;  had  he  stood 
aloof  from  his  age,  indifferent  to  its  interests,  yielding 
neither  to  its  influence  nor  in  turn  reacting  upon  it, 
—  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  include  him  among 
the  representatives  of  American  literature.  But  he 
was  not  only  a  writer  of  great  vigor  and  freshness, 
a  thinker  of  unusual  breadth  and  power,  but  a  man 
of  so  marked  an  influence  upon  his  age  that  "  all 
America,"  says  Emerson,  "  would  have  been  impov 
erished  in  wanting  him."  More  than  any  other  man, 
he  helped  to  free  New  England  from  the  cramping 
influence  of  a  narrow,  dogmatic  Puritanism.  He  not 
only  helped  to  make  literature  possible,  but  he  pro 
duced  literature.  His  essay  on  Milton  is  a  noble 

3 


34     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

piece  of  work,  dwelling  with  loving  minuteness  on 
Milton's  lofty  virtue,  his  love  of  freedom,  his  mag 
nificent  courage  in  poverty  and  blindness,  and  show 
ing  an  acute,  critical  appreciation  of  his  poetry  and 
prose.  His  essay  on  Bonaparte  is  a  remarkably 
fine  piece  of  character  analysis.  His  addresses  on 
"  Self-Culture  "  and  on  the  "  Elevation  of  the  Labor 
ing  Classes  "  are  so  replete  with  good  sense,  high 
moral  feeling,  delicate  sympathy  and  penetration, 
that  they  speak  to  the  needs  of  the  student  and 
laborer  as  pointedly  and  helpfully  to-day  as  they  did 
in  the  hour  in  which  they  were  written.  His  sermons 
have  a  glow,  a  fervor  that  rouses  the  feelings  at  the 
same  time  that  it  purifies  them;  for  Channing  had 
the  temperament  of  a  poet  united  with  the  aspirations 
of  a  saint.  He  had,  too,  the  true  literary  instinct,  and 
while  he  was  no  searcher  after  fine  expressions,  —  in 
deed,  had  a  horror  of  mere  rhetoric,  —  so  clear  and 
compact  was  his  thought  and  so  nice  his  ear  that  his 
language  is  always  terse  yet  harmonious. 

Unitarianism,  of  which  Channing  is  the  chief  expo 
nent  in  America,  had  its  martyr  as  early  as  1553, 
when  Michael  Servetus  was  burned  at  the  stake  at  the 
instigation  of  John  Calvin ;  but  the  word  "  Unita 
rian  "  was  first  applied  in  1568  to  a  religious  or 
ganization  in  Transylvania,  in  the  eastern  part  of 
the  Austro-Hungarian  Empire.  Milton,  Locke,  and 
Newton  were  Unitarians  in  belief;  but  a  Unitarian 
church  was  first  established  in  England  in  1774,  when 
Theophilus  Lindsey  left  the  Episcopal  church  and 
transformed  an  old  auction-room  in  Essex  Street, 
London,  into  a  place  of  worship.  King's  Chapel,  an 
Episcopal  church  in  Boston,  was  the  first  church  in 


William  Ellery  Channing  35 

New  England  to  avow  itself  Unitarian,  —  in  1777, 
three  years  before  the  birth  of  Channing.  Channing 
was  not,  therefore,  the  founder  of  a  new  sect,  but  he 
gave  a  new  impulse  and  a  new  dignity  to  an  old 
faith. 

William  Ellery  Channing  was  born  on  the  seventh 
of  April,  1780,  in  Newport,  Rhode  Island.  His 
father,  a  much  respected  lawyer,  was  of  English 
descent;  and  his  mother,  Lucy  Ellery,  a  careful, 
prudent  woman,  was  the  daughter  of  William  Ellery, 
one  of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence.  As  a  child,  Channing  was  serious  and 
reflective,  and  known  among  his  schoolmates  as 
"  Peacemaker,"  the  "  Little  Minister,"  or  "  Little 
King  Pepin."  But  he  was  a  fearless  boy,  with  all  his 
peaceful  instincts,  not  inactive,  a  remarkable  wrestler, 
and  fond  of  long  rambles  alone.  Large-hearted  and 
generous  in  nature,  money  would  not  stay  in  his 
pockets,  though  he  never  spent  it  wholly  upon  him 
self;  and  so  tender  of  life,  so  fearful  of  giving  pain 
was  he,  that  he  would  not  crush  the  smallest  insect  at 
his  feet,  and  never  hurt  a  bird  in  his  life.  His  nephew 
and  biographer,  William  Henry  Channing,  relates  as 
illustrative  of  his  serious,  earnest  nature,  the  story  of 
his  being  taken  as  a  child  to  hear  a  famous  preacher, 
whose  glowing  rhetoric  and  vivid  representation  of 
man's  lost  and  evil  state  filled  him  with  the  pro- 
foundest  grief  and  terror.  On  the  way  home  he 
heard  his  father  remark,  "  Sound  doctrine,  sir."  "  It 
is  all  true,  then,"  was  his  gloomy  reflection.  His 
heart  sank ;  the  light  of  day  seemed  blotted  out  to 
him.  He  waited  for  his  father  to  speak  to  him,  and 
presently  he  heard  him  whistle;  but  when  he  got 


3  6      A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

home  and  his  father  quietly  removed  his  boots  and 
began  reading  his  newspaper,  he  said  to  himself: 
"  Can  what  I  Ve  heard  be  true?  No,  father  does  n't 
believe  it,  people  don't  believe  it;  it  was  not  true." 
He  felt  that  he  had  not  been  seriously  treated,  and 
reflected  long  upon  the  inconsistency  of  living  happily 
and  at  the  same  time  expressing  belief  in  a  doctrine 
that,  rightly  apprehended,  would  make  life  a  curse 
and  torture. 

As  a  pupil,  young  Channing  was  persevering  and 
patient,  but  not  quick;  indeed,  he  was  thought  dull. 
Latin  was  especially  difficult  for  him,  and  it  is  said 
that  his  father's  office  assistant,  seeing  the  troubled 
boy  poring  over  his  task  one  day,  called  out  to  him : 
"  Come,  Bill !  they  say  you  're  a  fool,  but  I  know 
better.  Bring  me  your  grammar,  and  I  '11  soon  teach 
you  Latin."  The  sensible,  informal  teaching  soon 
bore  good  fruit,  and  Channing  became  a  fine  classi 
cal  scholar,  and,  later,  used  to  recall  his  early  read 
ings  of  Virgil  as  one  of  the  keenest  pleasures  of  his 
boyhood.  For  mathematics  he  had  some  aptness, 
but  no  particular  relish ;  and  in  college,  history  and 
literature  were  his  favorite  studies. 

In  1793  the  boy's  father  died  in  his  forty-third  year, 
leaving  a  wife  and  family  of  nine  children.  At  the 
time  of  his  father's  death  William  was  living  with  his 
uncle  Henry,  a  clergyman,  preparing  for  Harvard, 
which  he  entered  the  following  year.  At  that  time 
no  modern  language  was  taught  at  Harvard,  except 
French,  and  that  only  once  a  week.  The  library  was 
scant,  the  course  of  instruction  meagre.  The  presi 
dent  and  professors  were  seen  only  in  the  most  formal 
manner,  and  there  was  no  social  intercourse  between 


William  Ellery  Channing  37 

the  students  and  families  of  Cambridge.  There  was 
a  certain  class  pride  among  the  best  scholars  that 
offered  an  incentive  to  effort. 

Channing  was  at  this  time  small  in  stature,  but 
muscular,  in  perfect  health,  and  a  hearty  laugher. 
His  fluent  essays  and  orations  gave  him  distinction  in 
college,  and  were  the  result  of  careful  study  and 
preparation.  In  a  letter  to  a  youthful  friend  seeking 
advice,  he  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  his  aims  as  a 
student :  — 

"  At  your  age  I  was  poor,  hardly  able  to  buy  clothes  ;  but 
the  great  idea  of  improvement  had  seized  upon  me.  I  wanted 
to  make  the  most  of  myself.  I  was  not  satisfied  with  know 
ing  things  superficially  or  by  halves,  but  tried  to  get  some 
comprehensive  views  of  what  I  studied.  I  had  an  end,  and 
for  a  boy  a  high  end,  in  view.  I  did  not  think  of  fitting 
myself  for  this  or  that  particular  pursuit,  but  for  any  to  which 
events  might  call  me.  ...  I  never  had  an  anxious  thought 
about  my  lot  in  life.  When  I  was  poor,  ill,  and  compelled  to 
work  with  little  strength,  I  left  the  future  to  itself.  I  was  not 
buoyed  up  by  any  hopes  of  promotion.  I  wanted  retire 
ment,  obscurity.  .  .  .  What  you  want  is  to  give  tone,  freedom, 
life  to  all  your  faculties,  to  get  a  disposable  strength  of  intel 
lect  to  use  in  whatever  course  you  may  pursue.  A  profes 
sional  education,  or  one  designed  to  fit  you  for  a  particular 
profession,  would  make  but  half  a  man  of  you.  You  are  not 
to  grow  up  merely  for  a  particular  occupation,  but  to  perform 
all  the  duties  of  a  man,  to  mix  in  society,  to  converse  with 
intelligent  men  of  all  pursuits,  to  meet  emergencies,  to  be 
prepared  for  new  and  unexpected  situations.  A  general, 
liberal,  generous  education  is  what  you  need.  Every  study 
into  which  you  throw  your  soul,  in  which  you  gain  truth  and 
exercise  your  faculties,  is  a  preparation  for  your  future 
course.  I  have  found  a  good  in  everything  I  have  learned." 


38      A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

On  his  graduation  from  Harvard  in  1798,  Channing 
went  to  Richmond,  to  become  a  tutor  in  the  family  of 
Mr.  David  M.  Randolph,  United  States  Marshal  of 
Virginia.  There  he  first  saw  the  "  iniquity  and 
miseries  of  slavery,"  which  always  distressed  him 
exceedingly.  "  Language,"  he  says,  "  cannot  express 
my  detestation  of  it."  Including  Mr.  Randolph's  son, 
Channing  had  twelve  boys  under  his  care.  His 
nephew  relates  that  one  day  "  an  old  colored  woman 
came  into  the  school  to  complain  of  some  of  the  boys 
who  had  damaged  her  garden,  broken  her  fence,  and 
torn  up  her  flowers,  making  loud  complaints  and 
wanting  to  see  the  master  of  the  school.  When  he 
presented  himself,  she  surveyed  him  for  a  moment 
and  said,  '  You  de  massa?  You  little  ting,  you  can't 
lick  'em ;  dey  put  you  out  de  window  !  ' 

Channing's  boyish  stature  and  slender  figure  were 
always  a  matter  of  surprise  to  those  who  did  not 
know  him.  It  is  related  that  a  Kentuckian  who 
ardently  admired  his  works,  exclaimed :  "  Dr.  Chan 
ning  small  and  weak !  I  thought  he  was  six  feet,  at 
least,  in  height,  with  a  fresh  cheek,  broad  chest,  voice 
like  that  of  many  waters  and  strong-limbed  as  a 
giant."  On  the  contrary,  he  was  small  and  slender  to 
emaciation,  with  dark  brown  hair,  hollow  cheeks, 
and  shining  gray  eyes  deeply  sunken  in  a  pale  spirit 
ual  face  that  told  of  lonely  vigils  and  unremitting 
study.  His  health,  robust  enough  in  early  boyhood, 
was  ruined  by  his  ascetic  life  in  Virginia.  Living  in 
an  outbuilding,  giving  his  time  to  teaching  during 
the  day  and  seeing  little  of  the  family,  the  ardent, 
ambitious  youth  passed  most  of  the  night  in  study, 
remaining  at  his  desk  until  two  and  three  o'clock  in 


William  Ellery  Channing  39 

the  morning,  and  often  seeing  day  dawn  before  he 
was  content  to  relinquish  his  task.  He  had  resolved 
to  fit  himself  for  the  ministry;  and,  in  accordance 
with  his  ascetic  notions  of  purity  and  renunciation,  he 
felt  it  his  duty  to  subdue  the  animal  nature  and 
inure  himself  to  all  sorts  of  physical  hardships.  He 
slept  on  the  bare  floor,  made  experiments  in  diet, 
denying  himself  to  the  point  of  hunger.  He  spent  his 
salary  in  buying  books  instead  of  clothes,  and  went 
all  winter  without  an  overcoat,  though  he  was  always 
extremely  sensitive  to  cold.  His  shabby  clothing 
forced  him  into  a  solitude  whose  advantages  he 
praised  in  that  it  taught  him  to  depend  upon  himself 
for  enjoyment.  But  this  ascetic  life,  by  lowering  his 
vitality  and  sowing  the  seeds  of  lurking  disease  that 
made  a  life-long  invalid  of  him,  seduced  him  into  a 
state  of  melancholy  revery  and  not  active  thought,  to 
the  harmfulness  of  which  he  alludes  in  a  letter  written 
to  a  young  friend  in  later  life :  — 

"  Do  anything  innocent  rather  than  give  yourself  up  to 
reverie.  I  can  speak  on  this  point  from  experience.  At  one 
period  of  my  life  I  was  a  dreamer,  castle-builder.  Visions 
of  the  distant  and  future  took  the  place  of  present  duty  and 
activity.  I  spent  hours  in  reverie.  I  suppose  I  was  seduced 
in  part  by  physical  disability,  but  the  body  suffered  as  much 
as  the  mind.  I  found,  too,  that  the  imagination  threatened 
to  inflame  the  passions  ;  that  if  I  meant  to  be  virtuous,  I  must 
dismiss  my  musings.  The  conflict  was  a  hard  one  ;  I  re 
solved,  prayed,  resisted,  sought  refuge  in  occupation,  and  at 
length  triumphed.  ...  I  have  suffered,  too,  from  a  painful 
sense  of  defects,  but  on  the  whole  have  been  too  wise  to 
waste  in  idle  lamentations  of  deficiencies  moments  which 
should  be  used  in  removing  them." 


40      A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

He  tells  us  that  in  his  youth  he  once  handed  a 
lady  of  active  benevolence  a  poem  of  Southey's  that 
had  wrung  tears  from  him.  She  read  it  coolly  and 
said  with  a  smile,  "  It  is  pretty."  "  Pretty !  "  was  his 
indignant  mental  echo ;  but  in  reflecting  on  the  cir 
cumstance  at  home,  he  saw  that  the  mind  is  often  just 
as  passive  under  the  stimulus  of  mere  feeling  as  when 
it  receives  a  sensory  impression,  and  that  there  is 
no  moral  merit  in  possessing  feeling.  He  says :  — 

"  I  went  on  to  consider,  whether  there  are  not  many  per 
sons  who  were  still  deficient  in  active  benevolence.  A  thou 
sand  instances  occurred  to  me,  myself  among  the  number. 
It  is  true,  said  I,  that  I  sit  in  my  study  and  shed  tears  over 
human  misery.  I  weep  over  a  novel.  I  weep  over  a  tale  of 
woe.  But  do  I  ever  relieve  the  distressed?  Have  I  ever 
lightened  the  load  of  affliction  ?  My  cheeks  reddened  at  the 
question  ;  a  cloud  of  error  burst  from  my  mind.  I  found 
that  virtue  did  not  consist  in  feeling,  but  in  acting  from  a 
sense  of  duty* 

This  discovery  may  have  led  to  that  systematic  re 
pression  of  emotion  which  later  on  passed  for  cold 
ness  among  those  who  did  not  know  him  well.  "  My 
tears  do  not  lie  so  near  my  eyes,"  he  once  replied  to 
the  question  how  he  could  be  so  unmoved  during  a 
pathetic  appeal. 

In  these  early  years  of  struggle  and  search  after 
truth  and  light,  Channing  fell  into  the  dream  of  com 
munism.  He  looked  out  into  the  world  and  saw  that 

"all  is  hurry,  all  is  business.  But  why  this  tumult?"  he 
asked  himself.  "  To  pamper  the  senses  and  load  the  body 
with  idle  trappings.  Show  me  the  man  who  ever  toiled  for 
wealth  to  relieve  misery  or  unrivet  the  chains  of  oppression. 


William  Ellery  Channing  41 

Show  me  the  man  who  ever  imported  virtue  from  the  Indies, 
or  became  a  better  Christian  by  increasing  his  hoard.  Are 
not  the  mines  of  science  forsaken  for  those  of  Potosi?  .  .  . 
Ought  man  to  provide  most  for  his  body  or  his  mind  ?....! 
believe  that  selfishness  and  avarice  have  arisen  from  two 
ideas  universally  inculcated  on  the  young  and  practised  upon 
the  old :  (i)  that  every  individual  has  a  distinct  interest  to 
pursue from  the  interest  of  the  community  :  (2)  that  the  body 
requires  more  care  than  the  mtnd. 

11 1  believe  these  ideas  to  be  false,  and  I  believe  that  you 
can  never  banish  them  till  you  persuade  mankind  to  cease  to 
act  upon  them;  that  is,  till  you  can  persuade  them  (i)  to 
destroy  all  distinctions  of  property  (which  you  are  sensible 
must  perpetuate  the  supposed  distinction  of  interest)  and  to 
throw  the  produce  of  their  labor  into  one  common  stock,  in 
stead  of  hoarding  it  up  in  their  own  garners  ;  and  (2)  to 
become  really  conscious  of  the  powers  and  the  dignity  of 
their  mind." 

His  grandfather  Ellery,  in  a  plain  practical  way, 
set  forth  his  sensible  arguments  in  opposition  to  this 
enthusiastic  dream,  and  though  he  could  not  dampen 
his  young  grandson's  ardor  in  benevolence,  nor  de 
stroy  his  faith  in  the  ultimate  perfectibility  of  man,  he 
did  succeed  in  making  plain  to  him  some  real  objec 
tions  to  his  schemes,  and  directed  his  enthusiasm  into 
more  practicable  channels.  Later,  Channing  often 
said  that  all  that  was  worthy  in  his  own  life  and  in 
fluence  grew  out  of  the  fidelity  with  which  he  had 
listened  to  objections  offered  to  what  he  wished  to 
believe  or  do. 

Channing  spent  nearly  two  years  in  Virginia,  and 
in  1800  went  home  to  Newport  broken  in  health.  He 
stayed  at  home  a  year  and  a  half,  devoting  himself  to 


42      A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

theological  studies  and  at  the  same  time  taking  charge 
of  the  education  of  his  youngest  brother  and  Mr. 
Randolph's  son.  He  began  his  study  of  divinity  by 
a  careful  examination  of  the  evidences  of  Christianity. 
He  wished,  he  said,  to  know  what  Christ  thought,  and 
not  what  men  have  made  him  teach.  He  thought 
ministers  lost  themselves  in  unimportant  contro 
versies,  to  the  neglect  of  their  most  solemn  charge, 
the  saving  of  souls. 

In  1 80 1  he  was  elected  regent  in  Harvard  Uni 
versity  ;  his  duties  were  light,  requiring  only  general 
superintendence  of  the  students  in  the  building  where 
he  roomed,  and  of  the  building  itself.  The  office  sup 
ported  him  and  gave  him  an  opportunity  to  continue 
his  studies.  He  preached  his  first  sermon  at  Medford 
in  1802,  selecting  for  his  text  the  words  "  Silver  and 
gold  have  I  none ;  but  such  as  I  have  give  I  thee." 
He  received  two  calls  to  settle  in  Boston,  accepted 
that  of  the  Religious  Society  in  Federal  Street,  and 
was  ordained  in  1803.  He  lived  at  first  with  some 
parishioners,  but  soon  invited  his  mother  and  the 
family  to  Boston.  His  brother  Francis  and  he  had 
agreed  that  for  the  support  of  their  mother  and  the 
rest  of  the  family  one  of  them  must  remain  unmarried 
for  ten  years,  and  William  took  upon  himself  the  ful 
filment  of  this  obligation.  He  chose  the  smallest  room 
in  the  house  for  his  study,  and  for  a  sleeping-apart 
ment  shared  the  attic  with  his  younger  brother;  it 
was  a  cold,  bare,  cheerless  room  without  a  fire.  He 
dressed  cheaply,  though  always  with  careful  neatness ; 
and  though  his  salary  was  at  first  twelve  hundred 
dollars  a  year,  and  later  fifteen  hundred  dollars,  —  a 
very  good  salary  for  that  time,  —  he  did  not  save  a 


William  Ellery  Channing  43 

cent  of  it.  "  Really,"  said  his  elder  brother,  "  William 
should  have  a  guardian;  he  spends  every  dollar  as 
soon  as  he  gets  it."  Yet  the  dollar  was  never  idly 
spent,  but  always  for  the  comfort  of  somebody  else. 
The  other  members  of  the  Channing  family  were 
hilarious,  outspoken,  comfort-loving,  —  a  strong 
contrast  to  our  young  saint;  but  he  kept  his  own 
way  among  them,  redeeming  himself  from  any  ab 
surdity  that  might  attach  to  his  seriousness,  by  his 
real  consideration  for  others  and  his  rigid  conscien 
tiousness.  But  in  later  life  Channing  regretted  this 
early  repression  of  the  fulness  of  his  social  and 
poetical  nature,  and  used  often  to  say  to  his  nephew, 
"  I  am  too  serious."  He  was  gentle  and  loving,  in 
spite  of  an  inherited  tendency  to  irritability  and 
sternness.  Earnest  and  sincere,  simple  and  natural 
in  manner,  he  very  much  disliked  to  be  called  Rev 
erend.  His  manner  in  the  pulpit  was  as  natural  and 
unassuming  as  in  private  life.  He  had  no  grave 
pulpit  intonations,  made  few  gestures,  and  followed 
to  the  letter  his  advice  to  a  young  minister :  — 

"  Put  confidence  in  the  power  of  pure,  unsophisticated 
truth.  Do  not  disguise  it  or  overlay  it  with  ornament  or 
false  colors  to  make  it  more  effectual.  Bring  it  out  in  its 
native  shape  and  hues,  and  if  possible  in  noonday  bright 
ness.  Beware  of  ambiguous  words,  of  cant,  of  vague  ab 
stractions,  of  new-fangled  phrases,  of  ingenious  subtilties. 
Especially  exaggerate  nothing  for  effect  —  that  most  common 
sin  of  the  pulpit.  Be  willing  to  disappoint  your  hearers,  to 
be  unimpressive,  to  seem  cold,  rather  than  to  i  o'erstep  the 
modesty '  of  truth.  In  the  long  run  nothing  is  so  strong  as 
simplicity.  .  .  .  Prefer  the  true  to  the  dazzling,  the  sunlight 
to  the  meteor." 


44     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Charming  made  it  the  business  of  his  life  to  do 
good.  "  Let  me  remember,  with  Titus,"  he  said, 
"  that  I  have  lost  that  day  in  which  I  have  done  no 
good  to  a  fellow-man."  Continual  ill-health  and  a 
deep  sense  of  his  own  unworthiness  were  the  dragons 
he  had  to  fight ;  but  the  battles  were  fought  alone, 
and  no  one  was  ever  pained  or  disturbed  by  them. 

In  the  summer  of  1814  Channing  married  his 
cousin  Ruth  Gibbs;  four  children  were  born  to 
them,  two  of  whom  died  in  infancy.  Channing  was 
a  wise  and  loving  father.  He  says :  — 

"  I  wish  my  children  to  be  simple,  natural  without  affecta 
tion.  Children  are  often  injured  for  life  by  the  notice  taken 
of  their  movements,  tones,  sayings,  which  leads  them  to  re 
peat  what  draws  attention,  and  to  act  from  love  of  observa 
tion  instead  of  following  the  impulses  of  nature.  A  child 
should  never  be  tempted  to  put  on  pretty  airs  or  to  think  of 
itself  and  its  looks.  I  have  wished  my  children  always  to 
act  in  a  free,  natural,  unstudied  way,  —  without  the  desire 
of  being  observed,  —  and  on  this  account  I  have  been  very 
willing  to  keep  them  out  of  society  where  they  might  have 
been  taught,  by  injudicious  notice,  to  turn  their  thoughts 
upon  themselves,  and  to  assume  the  behavior  which  they 
would  have  seen  to  attract  attention.  The  charm  of  infancy 
is  its  perfect  artlessness,  and  the  immediate  communication 
between  its  feelings  and  actions.  I  would  prefer  that  my 
children  should  have  any  degree  of  awkwardness,  rather 
than  form  an  artificial  style  of  conduct ;  for  the  first  evil  may 
be  outgrown,  but  affectation  is  seldom  or  never  cured." 

In  1822  Channing's  health  had  so  far  declined  that 
he  went  abroad  with  his  wife  for  rest.  He  visited 
France,  Switzerland,  Italy,  and  in  England  had  the 
pleasure  of  meeting  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge. 


William  Ellery  Channing  45 

His  health  was  little  improved  by  his  travels,  and  in 
1824  the  Rev.  Ezra  Stiles  Gannett  was  ordained 
associate  pastor  with  him.  For  eighteen  years  he 
and  Channing  toiled  together,  and  gradually  Chan- 
ning's  time  and  thought  were  given  more  and  more 
to  philanthropic  and  literary  work,  while  Gannett 
assumed  the  duties  of  pastor.  These  later  years, 
full  of  work  and  study,  were  the  happiest  years  of 
Channing's  life.  He  was  accustomed  to  say  that  his 
childhood  had  been  sad,  and  once,  when  asked  at 
sixty  what  period  of  life  he  thought  the  happiest, 
he  looked  up  with  a  smile  and  answered  that  he 
thought  it  was  about  sixty.  The  rigid  asceticism  of 
his  youth  had  given  way  to  more  genial  interpreta 
tions  of  life  and  its  duties.  He  trusted  his  natural 
impulses  more  and  more.  "  He  changed  his  views 
from  time  to  time,"  says  Garrison,  "  but  only  to  ad 
vance,  never  to  retreat."  Thus  life  with  him  was  a 
growth,  and  he  had  not  yet  attained  the  limits  of  it 
when  he  died  in  1842.  He  had  been  on  a  journey 
in  Vermont,  when  he  was  taken  ill  of  typhoid  fever 
at  Bennington  in  that  State,  where  he  died  on  the 
second  of  October.  He  was  buried  in  Mt.  Auburn 
Cemetery,  near  Boston. 

Channing's  name  is  associated  with  all  the  social 
reforms  of  his  day.  He  sympathized  with  the  tem 
perance  cause,  and  took  an  active  part  in  the  anti- 
slavery  movement.  He  hated  war,  had  a  dread  and 
abhorrence  of  the  passion  for  power,  and  a  reverence 
for  liberty  and  human  rights.  He  was  intensely 
interested  in  the  masses;  he  believed  in  manual- 
training  schools,  and  one  of  his  dearest  ideas  and 
hopes  was  the  union  of  labor  and  culture.  He  did 


46     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

not  think  that  the  laboring  classes  were  to  be  elevated 
by  escaping  labor  or  by  pressing  into  a  different 
rank.  On  the  contrary,  he  had  great  faith  in  hard 
work.  He  says  of  the  laboring  classes :  — 

"  I  have  no  wish  to  dress  them  from  a  Parisian  tailor's 
shop,  or  to  teach  them  manners  from  a  dancing-school.  .  .  . 
Fashion  is  a  poor  vocation.  Its  creed,  that  idleness  is  a 
privilege  and  work  a  disgrace,  is  among  the  deadliest  errors. 
Without  depth  of  thought,  or  earnestness  of  feeling,  or 
strength  of  purpose,  living  an  unreal  life,  sacrificing  substance 
to  show,  substituting  the  factitious  for  the  natural,  mistaking 
a  crowd  for  society,  finding  its  chief  pleasure  in  ridicule,  and 
exhausting  its  ingenuity  in  expedients  for  killing  time, — 
fashion  is  among  the  last  influences  under  which  a  human 
being  who  respects  himself,  or  who  comprehends  the  great 
end  of  life,  would  desire  to  be  placed." 

The  elevation  which  Channing  desired  for  the 
masses  was  elevation  of  soul ;  he  wished  every  man 
to  be  a  student  and  thinker.  He  saw  the  dangers 
arising  from  the  love  and  spread  of  luxury  among 
them :  — 

"  Needless  expenses  keep  many  too  poor  for  self-improve 
ment.  And  here  let  me  say  that  expensive  habits  among 
the  more  prosperous  laborers  often  interfere  with  the  mental 
culture  of  themselves  and  their  families.  How  many  among 
them  sacrifice  improvement  to  appetite  !  How  many  sacri 
fice  it  to  the  love  of  show,  to  the  desire  of  out-stripping 
others,  and  to  habits  of  expense,  which  grow  out  of  this 
insatiable  passion !  In  a  country  so  thriving  and  luxurious 
as  ours,  the  laborer  is  in  danger  of  contracting  artificial 
wants  and  diseased  tastes;  and  to  gratify  these,  he  gives 
himself  wholly  to  accumulation,  and  sells  his  mind  for  gain. 


William  Ellery  Channing  47 

Our  unparalleled  prosperity  has  not  been  an  unmixed  good. 
It  has  inflamed  cupidity,  has  diseased  the  imagination  with 
dreams  of  boundless  success,  and  plunged  a  vast  multitude 
into  excessive  toils,  feverish  competitions,  and  exhausting 
cares.  A  laborer  having  procured  a  neat  home  and  a  whole 
some  table,  should  ask  nothing  more  for  the  senses  •  but 
should  consecrate  his  leisure  and  what  may  be  spared  of  his 
earnings,  to  the  culture  of  himself  and  his  family,  to  the  best 
books,  to  the  best  teachings,  to  pleasant  and  profitable  inter 
course,  to  sympathy,  and  to  the  offices  of  humanity,  and  to 
the  enjoyment  of  the  beautiful  in  nature  and  art.  .  .  .  The 
saddest  aspect  of  the  age  to  me  is  that  which  undoubtedly 
contributes  to  social  order.  It  is  the  absorption  of  the  mul 
titude  of  men  in  outward  material  interests  •  it  is  the  selfish 
prudence  which  is  never  tired  of  the  labor  of  accumulation, 
and  which  keeps  men  steady,  regular,  respectable  drudges 
from  morning  to  night.  The  cases  of  a  few  murders,  great 
crimes,  lead  multitudes  to  exclaim,  How  wicked  this  age  ! 
But  the  worst  sign  is  the  chaining  down  of  almost  all  the 
minds  of  a  community  to  low  perishable  interests.  It  is  a 
sad  thought  that  the  infinite  energies  of  the  soul  have  no 
higher  end  than  to  cover  the  back  and  fill  the  belly  and  keep 
caste  in  society.  A  few  nerves  hardly  visible  on  the  surface 
of  the  tongue  create  most  of  the  endless  stir  around  us. 
Undoubtedly  eating  and  drinking,  house-building  and  caste- 
keeping,  are  not  to  be  despised ;  most  of  them  are  essential. 
But  surely  life  has  a  higher  use  than  to  adorn  the  body 
which  is  so  soon  to  be  wrapped  in  grave-clothes,  than  to 
keep  warm  and  flowing  the  blood  which  is  so  soon  to  be 
cold  and  stagnant  in  the  tomb." 

Channing  was  an  uncompromising  defender  of  free 
dom  in  all  its  forms.  When,  in  1838,  the  editor  of  the 
"  Boston  Investigator  "  was  sentenced  to  two  months' 
imprisonment  on  a  charge  of  blasphemy,  Channing's 


48     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

was  the  first  name  on  the  petition  for  his  release, 
because  he  thought  it  shocking  for  a  man  to  be 
punished  for  his  opinions.  He  befriended  Garrison, 
the  great  champion  of  liberty,  when  he  was  the  most 
hated  man  in  Boston.  But  his  best  work  for  freedom 
of  thought  was  done  in  the  pulpit.  To  free  the  mind 
from  servility  to  fear,  to  free  religion  of  its  terrors,  to 
teach  men  to  give  due  importance  to  their  own  free 
moral  nature,  was  the  task  to  which  he  gave  himself 
heart  and  soul.  He  did  not  think  that  to  rob  man  of 
his  dignity  was  to  exalt  God,  but  that  the  glory  of  the 
Maker  lies  in  his  work.  He  did  not  believe  that  per 
fection  consists  in  self-oblivion,  but  in  an  ever-growing 
activity.  He  thought  that,  "  if  Edwards's  work  on 
the  Will  really  answered  its  end,  if  it  could  thoroughly 
persuade  men  that  they  were  bound  by  an  irresistible 
necessity,  that  their  actions  were  fixed  links  in  the 
chain  of  destiny,  that  there  was  but  one  agent,  God, 
in  the  universe,  —  it  would  be  one  of  the  most  per 
nicious  books  ever  issued  from  the  press."  "False 
theories  of  religion,"  he  said,  "  have  done  much  to 
perpetuate  those  abject  views  of  human  nature  which 
keep  it  where  it  is,  which  check  men's  aspirations, 
and  reconcile  them  to  their  present  poor  modes  of 
thought  and  action  as  the  fixed  and  unalterable  laws 
of  their  being."  He  had  a  strong  faith  in  humanity, 
in  progress,  yet  he  was  not  blind  to  the  difficulties  in 
the  way.  James  Freeman  Clarke  says :  — 

"  I  remember  Dr.  Channing's  once  telling  me  that  of  all 
the  words  of  Jesus,  nothing  struck  him  more  than  his  saying 
to  the  Jews  around  him,  '  Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your 
Father  in  Heaven  is  perfect/  '  Why, ?  said  he,  '  when  I 
consider  what  kind  of  people  they  were ;  when  I  consider 


William  Ellery  Channing  49 

the  hardness  of  their  hearts,  the  barrenness  of  their  minds,  — 
the  faith  in  humanity  which  could  inspire  such  a  saying  as 
that  seems  to  me  a  marvel  of  the  love  of  Jesus.  You  or  I,' 
said  he,  '  would  just  as  soon  have  thought  of  saying  to  these 
chairs  and  tables,  "  Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  in 
Heaven  is  perfect,"  as  to  those  men.'  " 

In  his  discourse  at  the  ordination  of  the  Reverend 
Jared  Sparks,  delivered  in  1819,  Channing  first  gave 
full,  free  utterance  to  the  doctrines  of  Unitarian 
Christianity.  He  defended  the  exercise  of  reason  in 
matters  of  religion.  He  declared  the  Bible  to  be  "  a 
book  written  for  men  in  the  language  of  men,  and 
that  its  meaning  is  to  be  sought  in  the  same  manner 
as  that  of  other  books."  He  objected  to  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity,  because,  while  acknowledging  in  words, 
it  subverts  in  effect  the  unity  of  God,  and  he  chal 
lenged  his  opponents  to  adduce  one  passage  in  the 
New  Testament  where  the  word  "  God  "  means  three 
persons.  He  declared  his  belief  that  Jesus  Christ  is 
a  being  distinct  from  and  inferior  to  God,  and  that 
he  did  not  offer  himself  as  a  mediator  between  offend 
ing  man  and  an  offended,  implacable  God,  but  was 
sent  to  men  as  a  great  moral  teacher  by  a  merciful 
and  loving  God. 

This  address,  which  was  published  and  widely 
read,  excited  much  controversy ;  but  though  conten 
tion  pained  Channing,  he  never  shrank  from  express 
ing  what  seemed  to  him  true  for  fear  of  giving 
offence  to  the  "  majority,  the  fashionable  or  the 
refined."  He  had  so  great  a  dread  of  being  creed 
bound,  and  thus  losing  the  capacity  for  receiving  new 
religious  truths,  that  he  even  called  himself  little  of 
a  Unitarian,  and  stood  aloof  "  from  all  but  those  who 

4 


50     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

strive  and  pray  for  clear  light,  for  a  purer  and  more 
effectual  manifestation  of  Christian  truth."  At  the 
ordination  of  a  fellow  minister,  he  said :  — 

"  Preach  with  moral  courage ;  fear  no  man,  high  or  low. 
Honor  all  men,  love  all  men,  but  fear  none.  Speak  what 
you  account  truth  frankly,  strongly,  boldly.  .  .  .  Wait  not 
to  be  backed  by  numbers.  Wait  not  till  you  are  sure  of  an 
echo  from  the  crowd.  The  fewer  the  voices  on  the  side  of 
truth,  the  more  distinct  and  strong  must  be  your  own.  .  .  . 
The  noblest  work  on  earth  or  in  heaven  is  to  act  on  the 
soul,  to  inspire  it  with  wisdom  and  magnanimity,  with 
reverence  for  God,  and  love  towards  men." 

When  we  remember  how  few  are  able,  or  dare  to 
think  for  themselves ;  how  opinions,  especially  of  a 
religious  and  political  character,  are  propagated  by 
contact  and  inheritance  rather  than  by  original  think 
ing,  we  shall  not  be  able  to  overestimate  the  influ 
ence  of  a  fearless,  original  thinker  like  Channing. 
His  works  were  widely  circulated  and  read  with 
avidity.  James  Freeman  Clarke  mentions  a  man  in 
Wisconsin  who,  unable  to  buy  a  volume  of  Chan- 
ning's,  copied  it  with  his  pen,  word  for  word,  from 
beginning  to  end.  "The  timid,  sensitive,  diffident, 
and  doubting  needed  this  voice,"  said  one.  It  awak 
ened  thought,  inspired  hope,  cleared  away  mists, 
called  men  to  their  feet,  directed  them  to  their  tasks, 
and  taught  them  to  find  freedom,  growth,  and  joy  in 
doing  it.  It  made  straight  the  way  for  Emerson  and 
that  group  of  buoyant  and  strong  writers  that  make 
the  glory  of  New  England.  No  man  of  his  day  had 
a  finer  feeling  for  what  is  excellent  in  literature,  or 
a  more  delicate  appreciation  of  art.  Washington  All- 


William  Ellery  Channing  51 

ston,  his  brother-in-law  and  friend,  said  that  there  was 
no  one  whose  judgment  in  pictures  he  valued  more 
highly  than  Channing's.  He  recognized  Words 
worth's  greatness  before  the  world  had  found  him 
out,  and  after  Shakespeare  there  was  no  poet  whom 
he  read  so  often.  Had  Channing  devoted  himself 
wholly  to  literature,  his  name  would  have  been  the 
first  in  criticism  in  the  literature  of  his  country;  but 
he  chose  a  nobler  work,  and  he  stands  first  as  the 
champion  of  intellectual  freedom. 


CHAPTER   III 

WASHINGTON    IRVING    (1783-1859) 

IF  sentiment  were  not  perennial,  if  it  did  not  prop 
erly  belong  to  youth  and  genius,  and  that  form 
of  mind  with  a  romantic  coloring  that  defies  time  and 
disillusionment;  if  humor  were  not  allied  to  a  keen 
and  loving  insight  into  human  nature,  —  Washington 
Irving  would  belong  to  a  class  of  writers  whose  reign 
is  over.  Only  three  years  younger  in  age  than 
Channing,  Irving  is  half  a  century  younger  than  he 
in  his  attitude  toward  life  and  the  problems  of  his 
time.  In  fact,  these  problems  did  not  exist  for  him. 
He  lived  in  a  world  remote  from  them.  His  mind 
brooded  lovingly  over  the  past,  gathering  to  itself 
all  that  was  picturesque  and  rich  in  coloring,  all  that 
was  genial  and  human  in  character,  and  all  that  was 
generous,  brave,  and  noble  in  sentiment.  That  which 
he  gathered  he  put  into  his  books  with  an  ease,  a 
grace,  a  gentle  humor  and  pathos  that  make  him 
one  of  the  great  masters  of  style.  In  selection  and 
execution  an  artist,  his  fame  rests  secure  in  the 
domain  of  art. 

Washington  Irving  was  born  in  New  York  City  on 
the  third  of  April,  1783.  His  father  was  a  Scotch 
Presbyterian,  and  his  mother  the  granddaughter  of 
an  English  curate.  He  was  brought  up  with  a  strict 
ness  that  led  him  to  think  that  everything  that  was 


Washington  Irving  53 

pleasant  was  wicked ;  but  a  naturally  sound  instinct 
protested  against  any  particular  horror  of  pleasant 
wickedness,  and  we  have  stories  of  stealthy  visits  to 
the  theatre  when  his  parents  thought  him  asleep  in 
bed.  He  was  not  remarkable  as  a  child,  and  his 
brother  relates  that  when  he  was  about  eight  years 
old,  he  came  home  from  school  one  day  and  said  to 
his  mother,  "  The  Madame  says  I  am  a  dunce;  is  n't 
it  a  pity !  "  But  he  made  no  particular  effort  to 
shine  at  school,  shirking  mathematics,  which  he  dis 
liked,  and  writing  other  boys'  compositions  while 
they  did  his  sums  for  him.  He  was  very  fond  of 
music  and  the  theatre,  a  fondness  that  continued 
with  him  through  life.  He  was  fond,  too,  of  reading 
books  of  travel,  and  used  to  take  them  to  school  for 
secret  perusal  under  his  desk.  Out  of  school  he 
wandered  about  the  piers,  looking  out  over  the  sea 
and  wishing  himself  on  the  distant  vessels  whose  sails 
he  saw.  He  loved  the  Hudson  and  said  of  it :  — 

"  I  thank  God  I  was  born  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson. 
I  think  it  an  invaluable  advantage  to  be  born  and  brought 
up  in  the  neighborhood  of  some  grand  and  noble  object  in 
nature,  —  a  river,  a  lake,  or  a  mountain.  We  make  a  friend 
ship  with  it ;  we  in  a  manner  ally  ourselves  to  it  for  life.  .  .  . 
And  I  fancy  I  can  trace  much  of  what  is  good  and  pleasant 
in  my  heterogeneous  compound  to  my  early  companionship 
with  this  glorious  river. " 

At  fifteen  Irving  left  school,  thus  missing  a  col 
legiate  training,  —  a  fact  that  he  always  regretted. 
The  next  year  he  entered  a  law  office,  and  the  third 
advocate  under  whom  he  studied  was  Josiah  Hoff 
man,  whose  house  "  became  another  home  to  him." 


54     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

In  this  home  he  met  the  daughter  Matilda  Hoffman, 
with  whom  he  fell  deeply  in  love.  The  pathetic 
story  of  this  attachment  is  best  related  in  his  own 
words,  found  after  his  death  in  a  package  of  manu 
script  marked  "  Private  Mems  "  :  — 

"  We  saw  each  other  every  day,  and  I  became  excessively 
attached  to  her.  Her  shyness  wore  off  by  degrees,  the  more 
I  had  reason  to  admire.  Her  mind  seemed  to  unfold  itself 
leaf  by  leaf,  and  every  time  to  discover  new  sweetness.  No 
body  knew  her  so  well  as  I,  for  she  was  generally  timid  and 
silent,  but  I  in  a  manner  studied  her  excellence.  Never 
did  I  meet  with  more  intuitive  rectitude  of  mind,  more 
native  delicacy,  more  exquisite  propriety  in  word,  thought, 
and  action,  than  in  this  young  creature.  .  .  . 

"  This  passion  was  terribly  against  my  studies.  I  felt  my 
own  deficiency,  and  despaired  of  ever  succeeding  at  the  bar. 
I  could  study  anything  else  rather  than  law,  and  had  a 
fatal  propensity  to  belles-lettres.  I  had  gone  on  blindly,  like 
a  boy  in  love ;  but  now  I  began  to  open  my  eyes  and  be 
miserable.  .  .  .  The  gentleman  with  whom  I  studied  saw 
the  state  of  my  mind.  ...  He  urged  me  to  return  to  my 
studies,  to  apply  myself,  to  become  well  acquainted  with  the 
law;  and  that  in  case  I  could  make  myself  capable  of  under 
taking  legal  concerns,  he  would  take  me  into  partnership 
with  him  and  give  me  his  daughter.  Nothing  could  be 
more  generous.  I  set  to  work  with  new  zeal  to  study  anew, 
and  I  considered  myself  bound  in  honor  not  to  make  further 
advances  with  the  daughter  until  I  should  feel  satisfied  with 
my  proficiency  in  the  law.  It  was  all  in  vain.  I  had  an 
insuperable  repugnance  to  the  study ;  my  mind  would  not 
take  hold  of  it,  or,  rather,  by  long  despondency  had  be 
come  for  the  time  incapable  of  any  application.  ...  In  the 
mean  time  I  saw  Matilda  every  day,  and  that  helped  to 
distract  me. 


Washington  Irving  55 

"  In  the  midst  of  this  struggle  and  anxiety  she  was  taken 
ill  with  a  cold,  Nothing  was  thought  of  it  at  first,  but  she 
grew  rapidly  worse  and  fell  into  consumption.  I  cannot 
tell  you  what  I  suffered.  The  ills  that  I  have  undergone  in 
this  life  have  been  dealt  out  to  me  drop  by  drop,  and  I  have 
tasted  all  their  bitterness.  I  saw  her  fade  rapidly  away- 
beautiful  and  more  beautiful,  more  angelical  to  the  very  last. 
I  was  often  by  her  bedside  j  and  in  her  wandering  state  of 
mind  she  would  talk  to  me  with  a  sweet,  natural,  and  affect 
ing  eloquence  that  was  overpowering.  I  saw  more  of  the 
beauty  of  her  mind  in  that  delirious  state  than  I  had  ever 
known  before.  Her  malady  was  rapid  in  its  career,  and 
hurried  her  off  in  two  months.  Her  dying  struggles  were 
painful  and  protracted.  For  three  days  and  nights  I  did 
not  leave  the  house  and  scarcely  slept.  I  was  by  her  when 
she  died;  and  all  the  family  were  assembled  round  her, 
some  praying,  others  weeping,  for  she  was  adored  by  them 
all.  I  was  the  last  one  she  looked  upon.  I  have  told  you, 
as  briefly  as  I  could,  what  if  I  were  to  tell  with  all  the  inci 
dents  that  accompanied  it  would  fill  volumes.  She  was  but 
about  seventeen  years  old  when  she  died." 

After  her  death  Irving  never  spoke,  even  to  his 
most  intimate  friends,  of  this  beloved  girl;  but  he 
was  faithful  to  her  memory  throughout  his  life.  Her 
Bible  and  Prayer-book  he  kept  with  him  as  long  as 
he  lived  and  wherever  he  went.  "  She  died  in  the 
beauty  of  her  youth,  and  in  my  memory  she  will  ever 
be  young  and  beautiful,"  he  wrote  of  her  in  his  note 
book  many  years  afterward ;  and  his  nephew  records 
that  one  day,  a  few  years  before  his  death,  speaking 
with  his  niece  of  the  solitariness  of  unmarried  life, 
he  said,  "You  know  I  was  never  intended  for  a 
bachelor."  Some  hours  afterward,  he  handed  her  in 


56     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

his  own  handwriting  a  copy  of  Campbell's  "What's 
Hallowed  Ground?  "  among  the  stanzas  of  which  the 
following  is  most  significant:  — 

"  For  time  makes  all  but  true  love  cold, 
The  burning  thoughts  that  then  were  told 
Run  molten  still  in  memory's  mould, 

And  will  not  cool 
Until  the  heart  itself  be  cold 

In  Lethe's  pool." 

Matilda  Hoffman  died  in  April,  1809.  Irving  was 
at  that  time  in  his  twenty-seventh  year,  and  had 
already  given  proof  of  unusual  literary  power.  In 
1802,  over  the  signature  of  Jonathan  Oldstyle,  he  had 
begun  contributing  clever  sketches  to  a  paper  pub 
lished  by  his  brother.  In  1804  he  had  gone  to 
Europe  for  the  sake  of  his  health,  as  he  had  been 
troubled  with  a  racking  cough  that  seemed  symp 
tomatic  of  consumption.  He  sailed  for  Bordeaux, 
travelled  in  France,  Italy,  Sicily,  and  visited  London, 
where  he  saw  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Kemble.  In  Rome 
he  met  Washington  Allston,  the  artist,  a  young  man 
three  years  his  senior,  and  caught  from  him  an  enthu 
siasm  for  art  that  made  him  wish  to  become  a 
painter.  He  returned  to  America  in  1806,  and 
passed  his  legal  examinations,  though  sadly  deficient 
in  legal  lore.  The  next  year,  assisted  by  his  brother 
William  and  James  K.  Paulding,  whose  sister  William 
had  married,  he  commenced  a  series  of  social  sketches 
published  periodically,  under  the  title  of  "  Salma 
gundi."  These  sketches  were  written  in  evident 
imitation  of  Addison's  "  Spectator,"  and  abound  in 
good-natured  satire  of  social  follies.  The  law  suffered 


Washington  Irving  57 

by  this  attention  to  literature,  but  it  was  destined  to 
suffer  still  further  and  finally  to  be  abandoned.  The 
Knickerbocker's  "  History  of  New  York  "  was  begun 
in  the  early  part  of  1809,  and  published  in  December 
of  the  same  year.  Written  during  the  year  in  which 
he  suffered  the  loss  of  Matilda  Hoffman,  it  bears  no 
mark  of  private  grief,  but  is  running  over  with  humor 
and  satire  from  beginning  to  end.  After  the  publica 
tion  of  this  history,  which  was  favorably  received  in 
England  as  well  as  in  America,  Irving  was  for  ten 
years  variously  occupied  in  politics,  magazine  writing, 
and  in  the  hardware  and  cutlery  business  in  partner 
ship  with  his  brothers.  In  1815,  in  the  interests  of 
this  business,  he  went  to  Liverpool,  intending  to  stay 
but  a  few  months,  but  he  remained  abroad  seventeen 
years.  The  business  in  which  he  was  engaged  finally 
failed,  and,  thrown  upon  his  own  resources,  he  turned 
his  attention  again  to  literature. 

The  first  fruits  of  his  new  leisure  was  the  immortal 
"  Sketch-Book  "  by  Geoffrey  Crayon,  the  publication 
of  which  began  in  1819.  It  opens  with  the  author's 
account  of  himself,  whence  we  learn  his  taste  for 
travelling,  his  preference  for  books  of  voyage  and 
travel,  and  his  subjection  to  the  spell  of  Europe's 
"  charms  of  storied  and  poetical  association."  The 
sketches  that  follow  are  interspersed  with  short 
legends  and  tales,  the  most  beautiful  as  well  as  the 
most  famous  of  which  are  the  "Legend  of  Sleepy 
Hollow  "  and  "  Rip  Van  Winkle."  Through  them  all 
runs  that  delightful  style  which  Irving  himself  so 
finely  praises  in  Goldsmith  as  "  mellow,  flowing,  and 
softly  tinted." 

"  Bracebridge  Hall  "  and  the  "  Tales  of  a  Traveller  " 


58     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

followed  the  "  Sketch-Book,"  and  shared  its  character 
and  spirit 

Irving  met  many  distinguished  men  while  abroad, 
among  whom  was  Sir  Walter  Scott,  whom  he 
described  to  his  brother  as  "  a  sterling,  golden-hearted 
old  worthy,  full  of  the  joyousness  of  youth,  with  an 
imagination  continually  furnishing  forth  pictures,  and 
a  charming  simplicity  of  manner  that  puts  you  at  ease 
with  him  in  a  moment.  .  .  .  Everything  that  comes 
within  his  influence  seems  to  catch  a  beam  of  that 
sunshine  that  plays  round  his  heart."  Irving  visited 
Paris,  where  he  led  what  he  called  a  "  miscellaneous 
kind  of  life,"  distracted  by  engagements  in  spite  of  his 
efforts  to  keep  out  of  society ;  and  there  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Thomas  Moore,  the  Irish  poet,  and 
John  Howard  Payne,  the  young  American  actor  and 
playwright,  author  of  "  Home,  Sweet  Home." 

In  1826  Irving  went  to  Madrid  to  undertake  the 
translation  of  a  new  Spanish  work  on  the  voyages  of 
Columbus,  but  having  access  to  much  new  material 
on  the  subject,  he  gave  up  the  idea  of  translating  and 
began  to  busy  himself  with  a  biography  of  Columbus. 
He  worked  hard  at  his  task,  neglecting  none  of  the 
drudgery  of  research.  Longfellow,  who  saw  him  at 
Madrid,  relates  that  — 

"  he  seemed  to  be  always  at  work.  .  .  .  One  summer  morn 
ing,  passing  his  house  at  the  early  hour  of  six,  I  saw  his  study 
window  already  open.  On  my  mentioning  it  to  him  after 
wards,  he  said,  '  Yes,  I  am  always  at  work  as  early  as  six/ 
Since  then  I  have  often  remembered  that  sunny  morning  and 
open  window,  so  suggestive  of  his  sunny  temperament  and 
his  open  heart,  and  equally  so  of  his  patient,  persistent  toil, 
and  have  recalled  those  striking  words  of  Dante,  — 


Washington  Irving  59 

'  Seated  upon  down 

Or  in  his  bed,  man  cometh  not  to  fame, 
Withouten  which  whoso  his  life  consumes, 
Such  vestige  of  himself  shall  leave 
As  smoke  in  air,  and  in  the  water  foam.' " 

The  result  of  this  patient,  persistent  toil  was  the 
"  Life  and  Voyages  of  Christopher  Columbus,"  which 
immediately  took  rank  as  a  complete  and  admirably 
executed  historical  work,  and  as  such  it  has  not  yet 
been  superseded.  Irving,  now  thoroughly  interested 
in  Spanish  investigations,  found  new  themes  for  his 
pen  as  his  studies  continued.  He  wrote  the  "  Con 
quest  of  Granada,"  and  on  the  twelfth  of  May,  1829, 
he  took  up  his  residence  in  the  Alhambra,  an  ancient 
royal  Moorish  palace  and  fortress  of  Granada.  He 
writes  to  a  friend :  — 

"  Here  then  I  am,  nestled  in  one  of  the  most  remarkable, 
romantic,  and  delicious  spots  in  the  world.  I  have  the  com 
plete  range,  and  I  may  say  control,  of  the  palace,  for  the  only 
residents  besides  myself  are  a  worthy  old  woman,  her  niece 
and  nephew  who  have  charge  of  the  building,  and  who  make 
my  bed,  cook  my  meals,  and  are  all  kindness  and  attention 
to  me.  I  breakfast  in  the  salon  of  the  ambassadors,  or 
among  the  flowers  and  fountains  in  the  Court  of  the  Lions, 
and  when  I  am  not  occupied  with  the  pen,  I  lounge  with  my 
book  about  these  oriental  apartments,  or  stroll  about  the 
courts  and  arcades,  by  day  or  night,  with  no  one  to  interrupt 
me.  It  absolutely  appears  to  me  like  a  dream,  or  as  if  I  am 
spell-bound  in  some  fairy  palace." 

In  this  quiet  and  romantic  retreat  he  put  the  fin 
ishing  touches  to  the  "  Legends  of  the  Conquest  of 
Spain,"  then  left  the  Alhambra  on  the  twenty-ninth  of 
July,  1829.  This  same  year  he  was  appointed  secre- 


60     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

tary  of  legation  at  London,  and  he  spent  the  follow 
ing  three  years  in  England. 

Irving's  remaining  works  on  Spanish  themes  are : 
"  Spanish  Voyages  of  Discovery/'  "  The  Alhambra," 
"  Moorish  Chronicles,"  and  "  Mahomet  and  his  Suc 
cessors."  Of  these  books  "The  Alhambra,"  styled 
by  Prescott  "  the  beautiful  Spanish  Sketch  Book,"  is 
by  far  the  most  attractive. 

Irving  returned  to  America  in  1832.  During  his 
seventeen  years'  absence  his  native  country  had  made 
rapid  strides  forward,  and  he  was  eager  to  see  the 
great  prairies  of  the  West  toward  which  emigrants 
were  hastening.  He  went  down  the  Mississippi  as 
far  as  St.  Louis,  travelled  on  horseback  in  Missouri 
and  Arkansas,  "  leading,"  he  says,  "  a  wild  life,  de 
pending  upon  game,  such  as  deer,  elk,  bear,  for  food, 
encamping  on  the  borders  of  brooks  and  sleeping  in 
the  open  air,  under  trees  to  guard  us  against  any  sur 
prise  by  the  Indians."  He  writes  from  Independence, 
Missouri,  that  he  has  been  out  on  a  deer-hunt  in  the 
vicinity  of  that  place,  which  led  him  "  through  some 
scenery  which  only  wanted  a  gentleman's  seat  here 
and  there  interspersed  to  have  equalled  some  of  the 
most  celebrated  park  scenery  of  England."  "  A  Tour 
on  the  Prairies  "  was  the  result  of  this  journey. 

Irving  was  now  anxious  to  make  a  home  for  him 
self  in  America,  and  bought  a  small  farm  at  Tarry- 
town-on-the-Hudson,  not  far  from  Sleepy  Hollow. 
He  remodelled  and  enlarged  the  house,  tastefully  laid 
out  the  grounds,  and  gave  to  his  new  home  the  name 
ofSunnyside.  His  brother  and  family  and  a  number 
of  nieces  were  invited  to  share  his  home  with  him. 
Of  these  nieces,  who  later  were  his  housekeepers  and 


Washington  Irving  61 

nurses,  he  used  to  say:  "  They  take  such  good  care 
of  me,  that  really  I  am  the  most  fortunate  old  bache 
lor  in  the  world  !  Yes,  the  most  fortunate  old  bachelor 
in  all  the  world !  "  For  ten  years  he  enjoyed  the 
tranquillity  and  domestic  happiness  of  his  home,  but 
busy  as  ever  with  his  pen,  contributing  to  the  "  Knick 
erbocker  Magazine  "  on  a  regular  salary,  writing  the 
"  Tour  on  the  Prairies,"  "  Astoria,"  "  Abbotsford," 
"Newstead  Abbey,"  "Captain  Bonneville,"  and 
planning  a  history  of  the  conquest  of  Mexico ;  but 
this  plan  was  generously  abandoned  on  learning 
that  Prescott  was  collecting  material  for  the  same 
subject. 

In  1842  Irving  was  appointed  minister  to  Spain, — 
an  appointment  which  he  accepted  not  without  reluc 
tance,  and  which  he  gave  up  in  1846.  He  had  now 
arrived  at  that  age  when  a  quiet  home  life  is  most 
fully  appreciated.  He  had  risen  from  obscurity  and 
dependence  to  honor,  fame,  and  opulence.  He  had 
indulged  his  love  of  travel ;  he  had  seen  much  of  the 
world  and  shared  little  of  its  vanities.  Nature  had 
given  him  a  big  heart  that  no  sorrow  or  disappoint 
ment  could  contract,  and  an  imagination  that  turned 
the  veriest  prose  of  life  into  poetry.  He  writes  to  a 
friend  from  Madrid  in  1845:  — 

"  Though  alone,  I  am  not  lonely.  Indeed,  I  have  been 
for  so  much  of  my  life  a  mere  looker-on  in  the  game  of 
society  that  it  has  become  habitual  to  me,  and  it  is  only  the 
company  of  those  I  truly  like  that  I  would  prefer  to  the 
quiet  indulgence  of  my  own  thoughts  and  reveries.  .  .  . 
When  I  was  young  my  imagination  was  always  in  the  advance, 
picturing  out  the  future  and  building  castles  in  the  air ;  now 
memory  conies  in  the  place  of  imagination,  and  I  look  back 


62     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

over  the  region  I  have  travelled.  Thank  God  the  same  plas 
tic  feeling  which  used  to  deck  all  the  future  with  the  hues  of 
fairy  land  throws  a  soft  coloring  on  the  past,  until  the  very 
roughest  places  through  which  I  struggled  with  many  a  heart 
ache  lose  all  their  asperity  in  the  distance." 

Settled  once  more  in  his  beautiful  home  at  Sunny- 
side,  Irving  resumed  his  literary  work,  and  in  1849 
published  the  "  Life  of  Goldsmith,"  which  for  genial, 
sympathetic  treatment  is  unsurpassed  in  biographical 
literature.  It  is  easy  enough  with  a  little  patience 
and  diligence  to  collect  written  facts,  make  sure  of 
dates,  and  arrange  them  in  chronological  order;  but, 
to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  real  man  through  these 
facts,  to  select  those  that  are  vital  and  characteristic 
and  to  reject  those  that  are  not,  and  to  recreate  from 
this  mass  of  inert  material  a  man  that  lives  and 
moves,  whose  hand  we  can  touch  and  feel  that  it  is 
warm,  into  whose  heart  we  can  look  and  read  there 
secrets  akin  to  our  own,  —  to  do  this  requires  a  sym 
pathetic  penetration,  a  subtle  power  of  yielding  one's 
individuality  to  the  domination  of  another,  a  breadth 
of  view  that  does  not  lose  sight  of  the  whole  in  its 
details,  which  are  qualities  that  belong  to  creative 
genius  of  a  high  order.  These  qualities  are  admira 
bly  illustrated  in  the  "  Life  of  Goldsmith."  It  was  a 
labor  that  he  took  delight  in.  He  says  of  it  in  his 
preface :  — 

"  It  is  a  tribute  of  gratitude  to  the  memory  of  an  author 
whose  writings  were  the  delight  of  my  childhood,  and  have 
been  a  source  of  enjoyment  to  me  throughout  life,  and  to 
whom,  of  all  others,  I  may  address  the  beautiful  apostrophe 
of  Virgil,  — 


Washington  Irving  63 

*  Tu  se'  lo  mio  maestro,  e  '1  mio  autore  ; 
Tu  se'  solo  colui,  da  che  cu'  io  tolsi 
Lo  bello  stile  che  m'  ha  fatto  onore.'  '51 

The  year  following  the  publication  of  the  "  Life  of 
Goldsmith,"  the  "  Life  of  Mahomet  and  his  Suc 
cessors  "  appeared.  It  is  not  a  particularly  strong 
book,  but  contains  a  good  deal  of  valuable  informa 
tion.  The  last  work  that  Irving  wrote  was  a  "  Life  of 
Washington,"  which  is  in  reality  a  history  of  the 
American  Revolution  and  only  incidentally  a  biogra 
phy  of  the  hero.  It  was  published  in  1855,  the  year 
of  the  publication  of  another  volume  of  miscellanies 
in  the  character  of  his  earlier  work  and  entitled 
"Wolfert's  Roost." 

Irving  was  now  an  old  man,  but  life  had  not  grown 
old  to  him  nor  were  its  joys  exhausted.  He  writes 
on  the  fourth  of  April,  1853:  — 

"  Seventy  years  of  age  !  I  can  scarcely  realize  that  I  have 
indeed  arrived  at  the  allotted  verge  of  existence,  beyond 
which  all  is  especial  grace  and  indulgence.  I  used  to  think 
that  a  man  at  seventy  must  have  survived  everything  worth 
living  for  ;  that  with  him  the  silver  cord  must  be  loosed,  the 
wheel  broken  at  the  cistern  ;  that  all  desire  must  fail,  and  the 
grasshopper  become  a  burden.  Yet  here  I  find  myself  un 
conscious  of  the  withering  influences  of  age,  still  strong  and 
active,  my  sensibilities  alive,  and  my  social  affections  in  full 
vigor. 

'  Strange  that  a  harp  of  thousand  strings 
Should  keep  in  tune  so  long.' 

1  "  Thou  art  my  master,  and  my  teacher  thou  ; 
It  was  from  thee,  and  thee  alone,  I  took 
That  noble  style  for  which  men  honor  me." 


64     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

While  it  does  keep  in  tune,  while  I  have  still  a  little  music 
in  my  soul  to  be  called  out  by  any  touch  of  sympathy,  while 
I  can  enjoy  the  society  of  those  dear  to  me  and  contribute 
to  their  enjoyment,  I  am  content  and  happy  to  live  on." 

But  he  was  not  destined  to  live  on  many  years.  An 
asthmatic  affection  had  troubled  him  a  long  while ; 
but  the  immediate  cause  of  his  death  was  heart- 
failure.  On  the  twenty-eighth  of  November,  1859,  as 
he  was  preparing  to  retire  for  the  night,  he  fell  back 
ward  to  the  floor  dead.  He  had  been  ailing  for  some 
time,  and  in  this  last  illness  said,  "  I  do  not  fear 
death,  but  I  would  like  to  go  down  with  all  sail  set." 
His  wish  was  granted;  his  work  was  done;  he  died 

"In  the  bright  Indian  summer  of  his  fame. 

How  sweet  a  life  was  his,  how  sweet  a  death ! 
Living  to  wing  with  mirth  the  weary  hours, 
Or  with  romantic  tales  the  heart  to  cheer ; 
Dying  to  leave  a  memory  like  the  breath 
Of  summers  full  of  sunshine  and  of  showers, 
A  grief  and  gladness  in  the  atmosphere." 

The  memory  of  Washington  Irving  is  very  dear  to 
Americans.  So  much  of  himself  was  written  into  his 
books,  especially  into  his  earlier  sketches,  that  he 
needed  no  biographer  to  acquaint  the  world  with  his 
personality.  Amiable,  modest,  affectionate,  lenient 
to  human  frailties  out  of  the  cleanness  of  a  heart  that 
knew  no  evil,  he  seemed  to  carry  the  morning  dew  of 
youth  into  the  noon  of  manhood  and  the  twilight  of 
old  age.  How  much  of  this  youthful  freshness  was 
due  to  his  early  disappointment  and  solitary  life  it 
would  be  hard  to  say,  but  writing  of  Byron's  unfor- 


Washington  Irving  65 

tunate  love  for  Mary  Chaworth,  he  says  what  seems 
singularly  applicable  to  himself:  — 

"  An  early,  innocent,  and  unfortunate  passion,  however 
fruitful  of  pain  it  may  be  to  the  man,  is  a  lasting  advantage 
to  the  poet.  It  is  a  well  of  sweet  and  bitter  fancies ;  of 
refined  and  gentle  sentiments,  of  elevated  and  ennobling 
thoughts ;  shut  up  in  the  deep  recesses  of  the  heart,  keep 
ing  it  green  amid  the  withering  blights  of  the  world,  and  by 
its  casual  gushings  and  overflowings  recalling  at  times  all 
the  freshness  and  innocence  and  enthusiasm  of  youthful 
days." 

This  freshness,  innocence,  and  enthusiasm  he  had, 
at  any  rate,  mingled  with  an  unfailing  humor  that 
softened  all  the  harsher  realities  of  life ;  and,  with  all 
that,  he  was  so  plain  and  unassuming  in  his  manner 
that  no  stranger  ever  suspected  him  to  be  a  man  of 
genius.  There  was  nothing  fastidious  or  eccentric 
about  him.  Writing  in  his  youth  of  the  miserable 
European  inns  and  his  lack  of  comforts  in  his  travels, 
he  said  that  if  he  could  n't  get  a  dinner  to  suit  his 
taste,  he  tried  to  get  a  taste  to  suit  his  dinner,  adding 
characteristically,  "  There  is  nothing  I  dread  more 
than  to  be  taken  for  one  of  the  Smell-fungi  of  this 
world."  Neither  was  there  anything  extraordinary 
in  his  appearance;  he  was  about  five  feet  seven 
inches  in  height,  somewhat  inclined  to  stoutness; 
had  black  hair  and  fine  dark-gray  eyes  that  lighted 
up  when  he  talked,  but  talking  was  not  his  forte ;  he 
had  a  slight  catch  or  huskiness  in  his  voice,  and  it 
was  a  tradition  among  wits  that  he  was  always  sleepy 
at  dinner-parties  and  often  fell  sound  asleep  there. 
Moore  says  of  him  that  he  was  "  not  strong  as  a 

5 


66     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

lion,  but  delightful  as  a  domestic  animal."  His 
nephew  accounts  for  this  drowsiness  at  dinner  by 
saying  that  his  sleep  at  night  was  always  fitful,  and 
that  he  read  and  sometimes  wrote  in  bed.  "  He 
often  had  a  peculiar  shambling  gait,"  says  one,  "  that 
would  attract  the  attention  even  of  those  who  did 
not  know  him."  His  dress  was  neat,  but  he  avoided 
peculiarities  and  extremes  of  fashion.  The  following 
anecdote  related  by  one  who  knew  him  will  illustrate 
his  modesty:  - 

A    contractor   for   building   the   Croton   aqueduct 
which  passed  through  Tarrytown,  was    accustomed 
to   meet,  at  the  temporary  building  erected  for  the 
reception    of  his   tools,    a   plainly   dressed,    simple- 
mannered    old    gentleman,  with  whom  he  fell   into 
conversation.     These  chance  meetings  continued  for 
upwards  of  six  months,  when,  one  day  travelling  on 
the  Hudson    and   in   earnest  conversation  with   the 
same  old  gentleman,  the  contractor  was  surprised  by 
hearing  the  bell  of  the  steamer  suddenly  ring  out. 
He  left  his  companion,  went  to  the  captain,  and  asked 
what  all  the  noise  was  about.     The  captain  replied 
that  they  were  opposite  Sunnyside,  and  Washington 
Irving  being  on  board,  they  wished  to  give  notice 
to  his  servant  to   be   ready  with   a  carriage  at  the 
landing.     The  contractor  with  great  enthusiasm  ex 
claimed,  "Washington   Irving!   he  on  board!    why, 
point  him  out  to  me ;   there  is  no  living  man  whom 
I  would  more  like  to  see."     The  captain  looked  sur 
prised,  and  replied  to  the  great  astonishment  of  the 
contractor,  "Why,  sir,  you  have  just  left  Washington 
Irving's  company,  and  from  the  number  of  times  I 
have  seen  you  in  familiar  conversation  with  him  on 


Washington  Irving  67 

this  boat,  I  supposed  you  were  one  of  his  most  inti 
mate  friends." 

Irving  was  a  member  of  the  Episcopal  church, 
loved  its  services,  and  was  to  be  seen  in  his  pew  at 
the  village  church  every  Sunday.  His  pastor  relates 
that  one  Sunday  morning  Irving  approached  him  and 
asked  why  the  "  Gloria  in  Excelsis  "  could  not  be 
sung  every  Sunday.  The  pastor  replied  that  he  had 
no  objection,  and  that  there  was  nothing  whatever 
to  prevent  it,  and  asked  in  his  turn,  "  Do  you  like 
it?"  "  Like  it!  like  it!  "  replied  Irving,  "above  all 
things.  Why,  it  contains  the  sum  and  substance  of 
our  faith,  and  I  never  hear  it  without  feeling  better 
and  without  my  heart  being  lifted  up." 

Though  Irving  was  social  by  nature  and  went  a 
good  deal  into  society,  he  was  not  indifferent  to  the 
folly  of  wasting  much  time  this  way ;  and  when  we 
remember  that  he  left  school  at  fifteen,  and  yet  that 
he  subsequently  contrived  to  make  himself  a  good 
Spanish,  German,  and  French  scholar  in  addition  to 
his  literary  work,  it  is  evident  that  he  did  not  neglect 
weighty  matters  for  social  pleasures.  "  When  you 
have  leisure,"  he  cautions  his  nephew,  "  do  not  waste 
it  in  idle  society;  by  idle  I  mean  what  is  termed 
fashionable  society."  And  writing  to  a  lady  in  Paris 
on  the  education  of  her  girls,  he  advises  her  not 
to  "  attempt  to  make  remarkable  women  of  them. 
Let  them  acquire  those  accomplishments  which  en 
liven  and  sweeten  home,  but  do  not  seek  to  fit  them 
to  shine  in  fashionable  society.  Keep  them  as  natural, 
simple,  and  unpretentious  as  possible.  Cultivate  in 
them  noble  and  exalted  sentiments,  and  above  all 
the  feeling  of  veneration,  so  apt  to  be  deadened,  if 


68     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

not  lost,  in  the  gay,  sensuous  world  by  which  they 
are  surrounded." 

Of  Irving's  literary  habits  N.  P.  Willis  gives  us 
some  account  in  his  report  of  a  visit  to  Sunnyside 
made  in  the  summer  of  1857  :  — 

"  Our  conversation  for  the  half  hour  that  we  sat  in  that 
little  library  turned  first  upon  the  habits  of  literary  labor. 
Mr.  Irving,  in  reply  to  my  inquiry  whether,  like  Rip  Van 
Winkle,  he  had  arrived  at  that  happy  age  when  a  man  can 
be  idle  with  impunity,  said,  '  No/  that  he  had  sometimes 
worked  even  fourteen  hours  a  day,  but  that  he  usually  sits 
in  his  study  occupied  from  breakfast  to  dinner,  both  of  us 
agreeing  that  in  literary  vegetation  the  '  do '  is  on  in  the 
morning ;  and  that  he  should  be  sorry  to  have  more  leisure. 
He  thought  indeed  that  he  should  die  in  harness.  ...  He 
was  never  more  astonished,  he  said,  than  at  the  success  of 
the  Sketch-Book.  His  writing  of  those  stories  was  so  un 
like  an  inspiration  —  so  entirely  without  any  feeling  of  con 
fidence  which  could  be  prophetic  of  their  popularity.  Walk 
ing  with  his  brother  one  dull,  foggy  Sunday,  over  Westmin 
ster  Bridge,  he  got  to  telling  the  old  Dutch  stories  which  he 
had  heard  at  Tarrytown  in  his  youth,  when  the  thought  sud 
denly  struck  him:  'I  have  it!  I'll  go  home  and  make 
memoranda  of  these  for  a  book ; '  and  leaving  his  brother 
to  go  to  church,  he  went  back  to  his  lodgings,  and  jotted 
down  all  the  data,  and  the  next  day,  the  dullest  and  darkest 
of  London  fogs,  he  sat  in  his  little  room  and  wrote  out 
1  Sleepy  Hollow '  by  the  light  of  a  candle." 

Irving  never  read  any  criticism  of  his  works,  good 
or  bad,  saying  that  if  his  writings  were  worth  any 
thing  they  would  outlive  temporary  criticism;  if 
not,  they  weren't  worth  caring  about.  That  they 
have  outlived  temporary  criticism,  we  know;  that 


Washington  Irving  69 

the  best  of  them  —  the  "  Sketch-Book,"  "  Brace- 
bridge  Hall,"  "  Tales  of  a  Traveller,"  "The  Alham- 
bra,"  "  The  Life  of  Goldsmith  "  —  belong  to  what  is 
imperishable  in  our  literature,  we  are  equally  safe 
in  saying  that  we  know.  The  romantic  coloring 
of  much  of  Irving's  historical  work  lessens  its 
value  to  a  scientific  age,  and  it  will  be  read  rather 
from  an  interest  in  the  writer  than  for  its  own  sake. 
The  Knickerbocker  "  History  of  New  York  "  made 
our  ancestors  laugh  while  the  memory  of  the  Dutch 
settlers  whom  it  ridicules  was  with  them ;  but  it  does 
not  amuse  the  present  generation  as  it  did  the  one 
for  whom  it  was  written,  and  very  likely  our  descend 
ants  will  not  be  otherwise  affected  by  it.  But  we 
pity  the  age  that  will  not  have  smiles  and  tears  for 
the  "Sketch-Book,"  that  will  not  see  the  broad 
humanity  of  it,  that  will  not  feel  the  influence  of  its 
perfect  style,  as  rich  and  mellow  in  its  subdued  glow 
as  the  Indian  summer  the  author  loved  so  well.  It 
belongs  to  a  class  of  books  that  time  cannot  touch. 
These  books  blossom  from  the  heart  of  man,  and 
strike  roots  again  into  every  heart  that  has  preserved 
its  sweet  humanity. 


CHAPTER   IV 

JAMES    FENIMORE  COOPER   (1789-1851) 

JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER,  the  first  Amer 
ican  novelist  to  win  distinction  outside  of  his  own 
country,  was  born  in  Burlington,  New  Jersey,  Sep 
tember  15,  1789.  His  father,  William  Cooper, 
moved  into  New  York  State,  then  a  wilderness,  in 
1790,  and  began  the  settlement  of  Cooperstown  on 
the  southwestern  shore  of  Lake  Otsego.  He  built  a 
mansion  there,  and  called  it  Otsego  Hall.  He  was  of 
Quaker  descent,  a  benevolent,  energetic,  vivacious 
man  who  loved  a  joke  at  any  expense.  A  little  vil 
lage  rapidly  grew  up  where  he  had  settled,  and  he 
was  elected  the  first  county  judge  of  Otsego  County. 
His  wife,  Elizabeth  Fenimore,  was  of  Swedish 
descent,  a  woman  of  energy  and  cultivation,  fond 
of  romance  reading,  and  the  mother  of  twelve  chil 
dren,  of  whom  James  Fenimore  was  the  eleventh. 

The  boy,  known  as  "Jim  Cooper"  among  his 
school-fellows,  inherited  the  robust  frame  and  healthy 
activity  of  his  parents,  and  spent  more  time  riding, 
fishing,  shooting,  skating,  and  roaming  the  forests 
than  in  studying  his  lessons ;  yet  he  was  noted  in 
the  village  school  for  his  spirited  recitations  of 
poetry.  After  a  few  years'  schooling  in  Coopers- 
town,  he  was  placed  under  the  instruction  of  a  clergy 
man  in  Albany  and  prepared  for  Yale,  which  he 


James  Fenimore  Cooper  71 

entered  at  thirteen.  He  was  still  more  conspicuous 
for  love  of  play  than  of  books,  and  after  spending 
nearly  three  years  at  college  was  sent  home  for  his 
participation  in  some  boyish  mischief.  Fond  of  ad 
venture  and  wishing  to  see  something  of  the  world, 
he  induced  his  father  to  let  him  go  to  sea,  and  at 
sixteen  he  made  his  first  voyage  to  England  and 
Spain  in  a  merchant-vessel. 

In  1808  he  was  made  United  States  midshipman, 
and  he  served  in  the  navy  for  three  years.  At  the  end 
of  that  time  he  left  the  sea,  married  Miss  De  Lancey, 
and  settled  for  some  time  on  a  farm  in  Westchester 
County,  New  York.  Later  he  lived  three  years  at 
Cooperstown,  and  was  the  first  secretary  of  the  first 
Agricultural  Society  of  Otsego  County.  He  de 
lighted  in  farming  and  took  pride  in  it;  he  loved 
animals,  and  they  soon  learned  to  know  him  and  fol 
low  him  about;  he  had  a  particular  interest  in  his 
vegetable  garden,  and  liked  to  boast  having  on  his 
table  the  earliest  green  peas  and  new  potatoes  in  that 
part  of  the  country. 

At  this  time  there  was  nothing  about  him  to  indi 
cate  that  he  was  soon  to  be  ranked  among  the  fore 
most  novelists  of  his  age.  He  even  disliked  writing, 
and  looked,  as  an  English  journalist  subsequently 
described  him,  "  like  a  bluff  English  farmer,"  and  not 
like  a  man  of  imagination  and  sentiment.  He  had  a 
huge,  strong  frame  above  the  ordinary  height,  and  in 
clining  in  later  years  to  corpulency ;  "  a  very  castle 
of  a  man,"  says  Irving, — with  a  large  strong  face, 
forehead  broad  and  high  and  prominent  over  the 
eyes,  —  deep-set  "  vigilant  eyes,"  says  one,  —  and  a 
firm,  inflexible  mouth. 


72     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

His  first  novel,  as  has  been  often  related,  was 
written  in  consequence  of  his  disgust  at  a  feeble 
English  novel  which  he  had  been  reading.  "  I  believe 
I  could  write  a  better  story  myself,"  was  his  impatient 
exclamation  as  he  threw  down  the  book ;  and  at  the 
urgency  of  his  wife  to  do  it,  he  wrote  and  published 
"  Precaution  "  in  1820.  The  novel,  a  story  of  English 
life,  is  conventional  in  subject  and  treatment,  but  it 
met  with  success  enough  to  encourage  the  author  to 
try  again.  This  time  he  chose  a  theme  from  Ameri 
can  history  in  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  and  the 
next  year  published  "  The  Spy,"  whose  hero,  Harvey 
Birch,  was  hailed  as  a  new  and  noble  creation  in 
fiction. 

In  1822  Cooper  moved  with  his  family  to  New 
York,  where  he  took  part  in  the  social  life  of  the  city 
and  belonged  to  a  club  of  which  the  poets  Halleck 
and  Bryant,  and  S.  B.  Morse,  the  inventor  of  the 
telegraph,  were  members. 

The  first  of  the  Leatherstocking  series  was  begun 
in  1822  by  the  publication  of  the  "  Pioneers,"  a  story 
of  frontier  life  whose  freshness  and  originality  made 
it  a  worthy  successor  to  "  The  Spy."  In  December  of 
the  next  year  he  published  "  The  Pilot,"  regarded  by 
many  as  the  best  of  his  sea  stories.  In  later  years 
Cooper,  who  had  modelled  the  pilot  after  his  concep 
tion  of  John  Paul  Jones,  regretted  that  he  had  over 
drawn  the  character,  as  he  thought,  and  given  to  it  a 
strength  and  a  nobility  that  did  not  in  every  respect 
belong  to  the  original.  He  also  regretted  that  he  had 
not  more  fully  worked  out  the  character  of  Long  Tom 
Coffin,  who  was  a  great  favorite  with  him.  But  the 
public  found  no  fault  with  the  book,  and  waited 


James  Fenimore  Cooper  73 

eagerly  for  its  successor.  It  came  in  the  form  of 
another  Leatherstocking  tale,  "  The  Last  of  the  Mo 
hicans,"  published  in  1826,  and  pronounced  by  some 
critics  the  best  of  the  series.  This  same  year  Cooper 
sailed  for  Europe,  and  he  remained  abroad  with  his 
family  for  seven  years.  Most  of  this  time  was  spent 
in  France,  where  he  was  consul  at  Lyons  for  nearly 
three  years.  Among  the  numerous  works  that  he 
wrote  during  his  residence  abroad,  were :  "  The 
Prairie,"  "The  Wept  of  Wish-ton-Wish,"  "The  Red 
Rover,"  and  "  The  Water  Witch." 

In  1833  he  returned  to  America,  and  after  a  short 
stay  in  New  York  City,  settled  for  the  rest  of  his  life 
in  Cooperstown.  He  lived  in  the  old  homestead, 
Otsego  Hall,  and  indulged  his  rural  tastes  in  beauti 
fying  his  estate  with  shrubbery,  plants,  and  flowers  in 
abundance.  His  habits  were  methodical;  he  rose 
early,  and  after  a  morning  walk  usually  wrote  till  late 
in  the  afternoon  and  then  took  a  walk  again.  He 
walked  with  a  cane,  and  his  erect,  portly  figure  was  a 
familiar  sight  in  the  streets  of  Cooperstown,  though 
he  seldom  spoke  to  any  one  on  the  street.  Indeed, 
at  this  time,  he  was  on  very  ill  terms  with  his  country 
men,  being  engaged  in  a  long  controversy  with  them 
that  embittered  his  later  years,  and  obscured  to  a 
great  degree  the  natural  goodness  and  sincerity  of  his 
heart.  He  had  left  America  a  passionate  lover  of  his 
country  and  defender  of  her  institutions  and  manners. 
He  had  published  in  London  a  book  in  two  volumes 
entitled  "Notions  of  the  Americans  Picked  up  by  a 
Travelling  Bachelor,"  in  which  he  tried  to  set  forth  to 
English  eyes  the  superiority  of  the  United  States  to 
any  other  country  on  the  globe.  He  predicted  the 


74     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

time  when  she  was  to  be  the  first  marine  nation  in  the 
world.  He  lauded  the  common  sense,  coolness,  frank 
ness,  energy,  and  courage  of  her  citizens.  He  praised 
the  modesty,  delicate  beauty,  and  sweet  domestic  vir 
tues  of  her  women.  He  dwelt  with  particular  pride 
on  the  absence  of  caste  feeling,  and  the  general  re 
spect  entertained  for  honest  worth  independent  of 
wealth  or  station.  But  the  book  was  not  particularly 
well  received,  either  in  this  country  or  in  England. 
Moreover,  Cooper  did  not  in  his  own  manners  convey 
a  pleasing  idea  of  American  independence.  He  was 
brusque  to  rudeness ;  he  was  absolutely  destitute  of 
tact ;  and  so  far  from  concealing  his  democratic  views 
where  they  were  most  offensive,  he  took  care  to  an 
nounce  his  contempt  for  kings  as  superfluities,  and  of 
lords  as  expensive  luxuries.  Yet,  with  all  his  demo 
cratic  principles,  he  had  that  fastidious  aloofness  of 
feeling  which  we  call  aristocratic.  "  A  man  of  un 
questioned  talent,  almost  genius,"  says  Horace  Gree- 
ley,  "  he  was  aristocratic  in  feeling  and  arrogant  in 
bearing,  although  combining  in  his  manners  what  a 
Yankee  once  characterized  as  '  winning  ways  to  make 
people  hate  him. ' ' 

In  England  he  was  welcomed  everywhere  for  the 
sake  of  his  great  fame  as  a  novelist;  he  dined  with 
lords  and  ladies,  and  met  the  most  distinguished 
writers  of  his  time,  among  whom  were  Scott  and 
Coleridge.  But  he  did  not  make  a  favorable  impres 
sion  upon  strangers.  His  brusque,  self-important 
manners,  his  violence  when  contradicted,  his  lack  of 
tact  which  made  him  always  say  the  wrong  thing,  and 
his  supersensitiveness  that  kept  him  ever  on  the  alert 
for  slights  and  causes  of  offence,  made  him  a  disagree- 


James  Fenimore  Cooper  75 

able  guest  where  his  talents  as  a  novelist  had  recom 
mended  him  to  particular  favor.  He  records  once 
quoting  to  Scott  a  Frenchman's  disparaging  criticism 
on  Scott's  "Life  of  Napoleon,"  and  then  naively 
comments  on  Scott's  evidently  not  liking  it.  He 
published  in  several  volumes  a  detailed  account  of 
his  experiences  abroad,  under  the  general  title  of 
«  Gleanings  from  Europe."  There  is  little  of  dignity 
or  acuteness  of  observation  in  these  gossipy  glean 
ings,  but  they  are  still  readable,  and  hardly  deserved 
the  '  fierce  attack  upon  them  in  the  "  Quarterly 
Review"  which  pronounced  them  an  "autobiography 
of  excoriated  vanity." 

Having  made  for  himsetf  rather  a  disagreeable 
personal  reputation  in  Europe  by  his  obtrusive 
patriotism,  Cooper  returned  to  America  only  to  find 
that  his  long  residence  abroad  had  unconsciously  pro 
duced  a  change  in  his  feelings  and  his  point  of  view. 
He  now  found  himself  out  of  touch  with  the  country 
he  had  so  passionately  loved  and  defended.  He 
found  America  altered  for  the  worse,  not  the  better ; 
he  saw  a  great  increase  in  wealth,  but  not  in  knowl 
edge.  Instead  of  the  simplicity  of  dress  and  manner 
that  he  had  so  often  praised  as  peculiarly  American, 
he  saw  everywhere  foolish  extravagance,  vulgar  dis 
play,  and  pretentious  ignorance.  The  boastful  and 
exclusive  love  of  country  which  in  his  own  case  he 
had  so  prominently  displayed  under  the  name  of 
patriotism,  and  of  which  he  saw  irritating  evidence 
in  silly,  blatant  Fourth  of  July  orations,  he  called 
the  "  governing  social  evil  of  America,  —  provincial 
ism."  The  rule  of  the  masses,  in  which  he  had  once 
felt  such  profound  faith,  he  now  saw  not  to  be 


7  6     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

necessarily  right.  And  what  he  saw,  Cooper  felt  that 
he  must  say  in  a  manner  as  unmistakable  as  possible. 
Had  he  possessed  the  humor  of  Dickens  or  the 
genially  satiric  power  of  Thackeray,  he  might  have 
tickled  or  gently  stung  his  readers  into  reform.  But 
the  genius  of  the  humorist  or  the  satirist  was  not  his. 
He  could  write  stones  of  adventure  on  sea  or  land ; 
he  could  depict  the  wild,  free  life  of  forest  or  prairie ; 
but  he  had  no  power  to  delineate  character  or  to 
catch  the  vital  facts  of  social  life  beneath  passing 
forms,  no  skill  to  touch  follies  and  incongruities  with 
that  humorous  exaggeration  that  amuses  without 
offending.  But  what  he  could  not  do,  he  tried  to  do  in 
pamphlets  and  novels,  of  which  "  Homeward  Bound" 
and  "  Home  as  Found "  are  notable  examples. 
These  books  and  pamphlets,  now  quite  forgotten, 
exasperated  his  countrymen,  and  led  to  attacks  from 
the  press  which  he  angrily  resented  by  bringing  suit 
after  suit  for  libel,  and  he  nearly  always  won  his 
case.  The  most  notable  of  these  suits  were  brought 
against  Thurlow  Weed  of  the  "  Albany  Evening 
Journal,"  and  Horace  Greeley  of  the  "  New  York 
Tribune."  Though  Cooper  rarely  kept  a  copy  of  any 
of  his  books  (his  daughter  Susan  says  the  "  family 
never  owned  a  complete  series  of  his  works  until 
after  his  death  "),  and  though  he  never  re-read  them, 
he  diligently  read  all  the  criticisms  about  them,  and 
was  galled  to  the  quick  by  anything  that  he  thought 
false  or  unfair  in  notices  concerning  himself,  and 
resented  them  accordingly. 

In  addition  to  his  quarrels  with  the  newspapers,  he 
had  had  the  misfortune  to  embroil  himself  with  his 
fellow-citizens  in  Cooperstown  on  the  subject  of  a 


James  Fenimore  Cooper  77 

point  of  land  belonging  to  his  estate.  This  point  of 
land,  known  as  Three  Mile  Point  or  Myrtle  Grove, 
was  a  prettily  wooded  piece  of  land,  less  than  an  acre 
in  extent,  jutting  out  into  Otsego  Lake.  During 
Cooper's  absence  in  Europe  it  had  been  used  as  a 
public  picnic-ground  and  pleasure-resort,  but  on  his 
return  he  claimed  it  as  private  property  and  forbade 
the  public  the  use  of  it.  Indignation  meetings  of 
the  citizens  were  called ;  resolutions  were  drawn  up 
denouncing  him,  and  it  was  recommended  that  his 
books  should  be  removed  from  the  public  library. 
But  Cooper  was  not  the  man  to  be  intimidated  into 
renouncing  a  claim  that  he  felt  to  be  just,  and  he  per 
sisted  in  it  until  it  was  recognized  even  at  the  expense 
of  his  popularity.  But  it  would  be  wrong  to  infer 
from  this  that  Cooper  was  naturally  a  quarrelsome 
and  illiberal  man.  He  was  really  a  good-hearted, 
sincere,  impulsive,  passionate  man,  generous  to  lib 
erality  ;  but  he  had  a  quick  sense  of  meum  et  tuum. 
It  annoyed  him  excessively  to  have  any  one  cross 
his  grounds  without  permission ;  but  he  would  have 
marched  an  army  through  them  of  his  own  accord,  if 
a  good  end  were  to  be  served  by  it.  He  would  have 
given  his  apples  away  by  the  bushel,  or  picked  his 
flowers  by  the  handful;  but  woe  to  the  boy  who 
dared  take  an  apple  by  stealth,  or  to  the  woman  who 
would  pull  a  rose  without  asking  leave  to  do  it.  "  It 
is  just  as  bad  to  take  my  flowers  as  to  steal  my 
money,"  he  shouted  one  day  to  a  woman  whom  he 
saw  picking  a  rose,  and  he  accented  the  angry  words 
with  a  threatening  flourish  of  his  cane  that  put  the 
poor  woman  to  flight.  But  his  faults  were  not  much 
deeper  than  the  surface.  "His  character,"  says 


78     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Bryant,  "  was  like  the  bark  of  the  cinnamon,  a  rough 
and  astringent  rind  without,  and  an  intense  sweetness 
within.  Those  who  penetrated  beneath  the  surface 
found  a  genial  temper,  warm  affections,  and  a  heart 
with  ample  place  for  his  friends,  their  pursuits,  their 
good  name,  their  welfare." 

In  his  own  household  he  was  full  of  vivacity  and 
cheer.  Like  his  father,  he  loved  a  joke,  and  when  he 
came  upon  a  good  thing  in  his  reading,  he  was  never 
satisfied  till  all  his  family  had  shared  the  fun  of  it. 
He  never  willingly  talked  of  himself  and  his  writings, 
and  entered  easily  into  the  interests  of  others.  His 
favorite  game  was  chess,  which  he  frequently  played 
in  the  evenings  with  his  wife.  He  was  a  man  of  deep 
religious  convictions,  and  was  strongly  attached  to 
the  Episcopal  church. 

In  1840,  after  the  controversial  novels  and  letters 
had  had  their  day,  Cooper  returned  to  the  field  in 
which  he  had  won  his  fame,  and  published  "  The 
Pathfinder."  The  next  year  "The  Deerslayer"  ap 
peared,  and  with  this  novel  the  Leatherstocking 
series  was  completed.  Two  more  sea  tales,  "  Wing- 
and-Wing"  and  "  The  Two  Admirals,"  followed  in 
1842,  and  were  succeeded  at  varying  intervals  by 
eleven  other  books  now  little  read  or  heard  of. 
Cooper  lived  to  see  himself  again  respected  and 
admired  after  years  of  unpopularity  and  detraction ; 
he  died  of  dropsy  on  the  fourteenth  of  September, 
1851.  His  wife  died  four  months  later,  and  was 
buried  by  his  side,  in  the  graveyard  of  Christ  Church, 
Cooperstown. 

Cooper  had  a  great  dislike  of  publicity,  and  on  his 
deathbed  asked  his  family  to  allow  no  authorized  life 


James  Fenimore  Cooper  79 

of  him  to  be  published.  Owing  to  their  scrupulous 
fidelity  to  his  wish,  we  are  without  those  interesting 
biographical  details  which  are  so  indispensable  to  a 
complete  and  correct  idea  of  the  personality  of  a 
writer  whose  books  do  not  reflect  it;  but  the  ample 
and  sometimes  tedious  prefaces  with  which  he  intro 
duced  his  books  throw  light  enough  upon  his  aims  as 
a  novelist.  The  hero  of  the  five  Leatherstocking 
tales  in  which  Cooper's  best  and  most  popular  work 
is  done,  is  variously  known  as  Natty  Bumppo,  Leather- 
stocking,  Deerslayer,  and  Hawkeye.  In  his  preface 
to  "  Deerslayer,"  Cooper  gives  us  his  idea  of  Natty 
Bumppo,  and  defends  his  romantic  conception  of  the 
Indian:  — 

"  Taking  the  life  of  the  Leatherstocking  as  a  guide,  <  The 
Deerslayer '  should  have  been  the  opening  book,  for  in  that 
work  he  is  seen  just  emerging  into  manhood;  to  be  suc 
ceeded  by  '  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans/  '  The  Pathfinder,' 
<  The  Pioneers/  and  <  The  Prairie.'  .  .  . 

"  The  author  has  been  often  asked  if  he  had  any  original 
in  his  mind  for  the  character  of  Leatherstocking.  In  a 
physical  sense  different  individuals,  known  to  the  writer  in 
early  life,  certainly  presented  themselves  as  models,  through 
his  recollections  ;  but  in  a  moral  sense  the  man  of  the  forest 
is  purely  a  creation.  The  idea  of  delineating  a  character 
that  possessed  little  of  civilization  but  its  highest  principles, 
as  they  are  exhibited  in  the  half- educated,  and  all  of  savage 
life  that  is  not  incompatible  with  these  great  rules  of  conduct, 
is  perhaps  natural  to  the  situation  in  which  Natty  is  placed. 
He  is  too  proud  of  his  origin  to  sink  into  the  condition  of 
the  wild  Indian,  and  too  much  a  man  of  the  woods  not  to 
imbibe  so  much  as  was  at  all  desirable  from  his  friends  arid 
companions.  In  a  moral  point  of  view  it  was  his  intention 


8o     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

to  illustrate  the  effect  of  seed  scattered  by  the  wayside.  To 
use  his  own  language,  his  '  gifts  '  were  *  white  gifts,'  and  he 
was  not  disposed  to  bring  on  them  discredit.  On  the  other 
hand,  removed  from  nearly  all  the  temptations  of  civilized 
life,  placed  in  the  best  associations  of  that  which  is  deemed 
savage,  and  favorably  disposed  by  nature  to  improve  such 
advantages,  it  appeared  to  the  writer  that  the  hero  was  a  fit 
subject  to  represent  the  better  qualities  of  both  conditions, 
without  pushing  either  to  extremes.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  the  privilege  of  all  writers  of  fiction,  more  particu 
larly  when  their  works  aspire  to  the  elevation  of  romance,  to 
present  the  beau  ideal  of  their  characters  to  the  reader. 
This  it  is  which  constitutes  poetry,  and  to  suppose  that  the 
red  man  is  to  be  represented  only  in  the  squalid  misery  or  in 
the  degraded  moral  state  that  certainly  more  or  less  belongs 
to  his  condition  is,  we  apprehend,  taking  a  very  narrow  view 
of  an  author's  privileges.  Such  criticisms  would  have  de 
prived  the  world  even  of  Homer." 

Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  waning  popularity  of 
Cooper  and  of  the  failure  of  his  novels  as  higher 
creations  of  art,  it  is  an  incontestable  fact  that  his  sea 
tales  and  Leatherstocking  stories  still  find  a  ready 
sale,  and  that  his  name  was  once  coupled  with  Scott's 
as  a  master  of  fiction.  His  novels  were  translated 
into  French,  German,  Spanish,  and  even  into  the 
Persian  tongue,  and  wherever  they  were  read  it  was 
with  admiration  and  keen  delight.  That  much  of  his 
popularity  was  due  to  the  novelty  of  his  themes  can 
not  be  doubted.  An  English  writer  in  "  Colburn's 
New  Monthly  Magazine,"  1831,  says:  — 

"  We  are  not  hazarding  much  in  saying  that  no  writer 
ever  possessed  the  advantages  enjoyed  by  the  author  of '  The 
Spy '  on  his  first  outset  in  literary  life.  The  very  peculiarity 


James  Fenimore  Cooper  81 

of  his  situation  rendered  it  next  to  impossible  for  him  to  fail 
in  charming  that  large  portion  of  the  English  people  denom 
inated  the  novel-readers.  Scott  had  set  his  seal  upon  us. 
The  author  of '  Waverley  '  —  the  great  Napoleon  of  novelists 
—  had  conquered  the  country  from  one  end  of  it  to  the 
other.  Nothing  then  could  be  more  fortunate  as  regards 
time,  and  as  to  place,  what  region  could  be  so  pregnant 
with  interest,  or  what  subject  so  calculated  to  gratify  the 
cravings  of  an  excited  curiosity  as  America?  —  a  country 
which  had  hitherto  been  considered  alike  destitute  of  writers 
and  readers,  whose  soil  had  even  been  pronounced  by  the 
learned  in  these  matters  to  be  essentially  unfavorable  to  the 
growth  of  genius,  and  in  which  one  could  no  more  think  of 
looking  for  the  golden  graces  of  literature  than  for  dancers 
among  the  Dutch.  An  Esquimau  poet  brought  over  by 
Captain  Parry  could  hardly  have  excited  more  wonder  than 
the  great  American  novelist  when  he  made  his  first  appear 
ance  in  Europe.  The  world  fell  into  a  fit  of  admiration  at 
the  first  sign  of  a  genius  on  the  barren  waste  of  America,  and 
stared  at  it  as  the  bewildered  Crusoe  did  at  Friday's  foot 
mark  on  the  sand." 

The  writer  continues  his  article  with  lavish  praises 
of  Cooper's  knowledge  of  human  nature,  his  invention, 
his  talent  for  description,  and  "  the  refined  power  and 
delicacy  which  he  displayed  in  his  delineation  of  the 
female  character."  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  these  very 
gifts  for  which  the  English  critic  praised  Cooper  over 
half  a  century  ago,  are  those  which  our  own  later 
critics  deny  him,  and  for  the  absence  of  which  he  is 
no  longer  read  with  pleasure  by  cultivated  readers  out 
of  their  teens.  His  women,  says  Lowell,  — 

"  from  one  model  don't  vary, 
All  sappy  as  maples,  and  flat  as  a  prairie." 
6 


82          General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

His  characters  show  no  development;  they  are 
ready  made  from  the  start ;  we  know  that  his  heroes 
will  always  behave  with  intrepidity  and  coolness  in 
every  situation,  and  that  his  women  will  always  live 
up  to  the  author's  standard  of  feminine  meekness 
and  decorum.  As  for  his  invention,  we  shall  let 
Mark  Twain  speak  of  that,  only  premising  that 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  truth  under  his  humorous 
exaggeration :  — 

11  Cooper's  gift  in  the  way  of  invention  was  not  a  rich  en 
dowment  ;  but  such  as  it  was  he  liked  to  work  it ;  he  was 
pleased  with  the  effects,  and,  indeed,  he  did  some  quite  sweet 
things  with  it.  In  his  little  box  of  stage  properties  he  had  six 
or  eight  cunning  devices,  tricks,  artifices,  for  his  savages  and 
woodsmen  to  deceive  and  circumvent  each  other  with,  and 
he  was  never  so  happy  as  when  he  was  working  these  inno 
cent  things  and  seeing  them  go.  A  favorite  one  was  to  make 
a  moccasined  person  tread  in  the  tracks  of  the  moccasined 
enemy,  and  thus  hide  his  own  trail.  Cooper  wore  out  bar 
rels  and  barrels  of  moccasins  in  working  that  trick.  Another 
stage  property  that  he  pulled  out  of  the  box  pretty  frequently 
was  his  broken  twig.  He  prized  his  broken  twig  above  all 
the  rest  of  his  effects,  and  worked  it  the  hardest.  It  is  a 
restful  chapter  in  any  of  his  books  when  somebody  does  n't 
step  on  a  dry  twig  and  alarm  all  the  reds  and  whites  for  two 
hundred  yards  around.  Every  time  a  Cooper  person  is  in 
peril  and  absolute  silence  is  worth  four  dollars  a  minute,  he 
is  sure  to  step  on  a  dry  twig.  Cooper  requires  him  to  turn 
out  and  find  a  dry  twig ;  and  if  he  can't  do  it,  to  go  and 
borrow  one.  In  fact,  the  Leatherstocking  series  ought  to 
have  been  called  the  Broken  Twig  series." 

Fortunately  for  Cooper's  reputation,  our  ancestors 
were  not  so  critical  as  we ;  they  were  under  no  sub- 


James  Fenimore  Cooper  83 

jection  to  facts;  they  could  enjoy  Natty  Bumppo 
without  questioning  his  phenomenal  skill  with  the 
rifle,  and  accept  the  "  noble  red  man  "  with  his  civ 
ilized  virtues  and  refinements  of  feeling  as  a  correct 
delineation  of  the  North  American  savage.  It  was 
not  human  nature  in  itself  that  the  great  mass  of  novel- 
readers  understood  or  were  so  much  interested  in. 
The  faultless  hero  and  virtueless  villain  were  two 
favorite  types  of  human  nature.  Even  Charlotte 
Bronte,  with  all  her  knowledge  of  the  human  heart 
that  kept  her  from  falling  into  insipidity  in  her  own 
work,  was  enraged  with  Thackeray  for  "  making  Lady 
Castlewood  peep  through  a  keyhole,  listen  at  a  door, 
and  be  jealous  of  a  boy  and  a  milkmaid ;  "  and  yet 
there  is  not  a  more  striking  instance  of  Thackeray's 
genius  than  this  very  perception  that  an  essentially 
noble  nature  may  be  betrayed  into  weakness  by  the 
dominance  of  a  master  passion.  But  our  ancestors 
preferred  their  heroes  and  heroines  unalloyed  with 
weakness.  They  cared  less  for  the  spectacle  of  the 
drama  of  a  soul  in  conflict  with  passions  or  in  a  strug 
gle  with  circumstances,  than  for  thrilling  accounts  of 
adventures  that  endanger  the  body.  In  this  field 
Cooper  had  a  new  world  all  to  himself,  and  he  made 
excellent  use  of  his  advantages.  He  wrote  rapidly 
and  very  often  with  slovenly  inaccuracy  in  grammatical 
construction  and  the  selection  of  words,  but  there 
was  the  breath  of  the  prairies  and  the  odor  of  forests 
in  his  books.  They  depicted  a  beautiful,  wild,  free, 
unconventional  life  of  adventure  on  sea  and  land  that 
came  like  a  revelation  to  those  who  knew  nothing  of 
woods  and  waters  beyond  the  suggestions  of  a  city 
park.  There  were  no  taints  of  sewers  and  gutters  in 


84     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

his  books.  They  were  clean  and  sweet  as  a  wild  rose ; 
and  for  this  reason,  though  the  Leatherstocking  tales 
have  lost  their  hold  upon  maturer  readers,  they  may 
still  be  recommended  to  the  young  as  the  most 
wholesome  and  entertaining  of  novels. 


CHAPTER  V 

WILLIAM   CULLEN  BRYANT    (1794-1878) 

WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT,  the  first  dis 
tinguished  poet  of  America,  was  born  in  the 
little  town  of  Cummington,  in  western  Massachu 
setts,  November  3,  1794.  On  his  mother's  side,  he 
was  descended  from  the  Puritan  John  Alden  and  his 
wife,  Priscilla  Mullens.  His  father,  a  country  phy 
sician,  was  a  man  of  decided  literary  tastes,  and  in 
the  good  library  which  he  had  collected  the  boy  had 
access  to  the  writings  of  the  best  English  authors  of 
his  time.  He  was  a  precocious  lad,  and  at  ten  years 
of  age  wrote  verses  for  the  local  papers ;  at  thirteen 
he  published  a  satire  on  Jefferson's  administration, 
entitled  "  The  Embargo ;  "  and  before  the  comple 
tion  of  his  eighteenth  year  he  had  composed  the 
poem,  "  Thanatopsis,"  with  which  his  name  is  most 
generally  associated,  and  which  is  usually  considered 
his  masterpiece. 

The  gravity  of  these  early  poems  —  a  gravity  which 
characterizes  all  Bryant's  works  —  is  singularly  in 
harmony  with  the  tone  of  thought  prevalent  in  New 
England  during  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  In  an  autobiographical  fragment  Bryant 
gives  us  a  pleasant  glimpse  of  his  youthful  environ 
ment.  He  tells  us  of  the  profound  respect  enter 
tained  for  the  clergy,  so  that  the  mere  presence  of  a 
minister  of  the  gospel  was  as  effectual  in  quelling  a 


86     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

disturbance  as  that  of  a  police  force.  Church-going 
was  universal.  Men  called  tithing-men  were  ap 
pointed  to  keep  order  in  church.  There  was  an 
especially  keen  surveillance  of  the  boys,  and  if  two 
were  caught  whispering,  one  was  led  away  by  the 
button  to  sit  beside  the  stern  keeper  of  the  peace. 
These  tithing-men  were  also  empowered  by  law  to 
see  that  no  one  unnecessarily  absented  himself  from 
church.  If  he  did  so,  he  was  fined.  Parental  dis 
cipline  was  severe.  Says  Bryant :  — 

"The  boys  of  the  generation  to  which  I  belonged, — 
that  is  to  say,  who  were  born  in  the  last  years  of 
the  last  century  or  the  earliest  of  this,  —  were  brought  up 
under  a  system  of  discipline  which  put  a  far  greater  dis 
tance  between  parents  and  their  children  than  now  exists. 
The  parents  seemed  to  think  this  necessary  in  order  to 
secure  obedience.  They  were  believers  in  the  old  maxim 
that  familiarity  breeds  contempt.  My  own  parents  lived  in 
the  house  with  my  grandfather  and  grandmother  on  the 
mother's  side.  My  grandfather  was  a  disciplinarian  of  the 
stricter  sort,  and  I  can  hardly  find  words  to  express  the  awe 
in  which  I  stood  of  him,  —  an  awe  so  great  as  almost  to 
prevent  anything  like  affection  on  my  part,  although  he  was 
in  the  main  kind,  and  certainly  never  thought  of  being  severe 
beyond  what  was  necessary  to  maintain  a  proper  degree  of 
order  in  the  family.  .  .  .  With  my  father  and  mother  I  was 
on  much  easier  terms  than  with  my  grandfather.  If  a  favor 
was  to  be  asked  of  my  grandfather,  it  was  asked  with  fear 
and  trembling ;  the  request  was  postponed  to  the  last  mo 
ment  and  then  made  with  hesitation  and  blushes  and  a 
confused  utterance." 

Huskings,  apple-parings,  house-raisings,  social  in 
tercourse  at  the  singing-schools,  furnished  the  simple 


William  Cullen  Bryant  87 

and  wholesome  amusements  of  the  villagers.  The 
hurry  and  fret  and  feverish  anxieties  of  modern  life 
were  as  remote  from  them  as  from  the  villagers  of 
Goldsmith's  "  Sweet  Auburn."  The  effect  of  this 
simple  and  regular  life,  and  the  influence  of  religious 
teaching  in  familiarizing  the  mind  with  images  and 
thoughts  of  death,  are  very  apparent  in  Bryant's 
poetry. 

In  his  sixteenth  year  Bryant  entered  Williams 
College,  where  he  remained  seven  months  preparing 
himself  for  Yale.  But  his  father's  means  would  not 
allow  him  to  bear  the  expense  of  a  course  at  Yale, 
and  he  returned  home,  where  he  busied  himself  a 
year  or  more  with  farm-work,  meanwhile  reading 
assiduously  from  his  father's  library  and  growing 
acquainted  with  the  wild  flowers  of  forest  and  field. 
"  I  was  always  from  my  earliest  years,"  he  writes,  "  a 
delighted  observer  of  external  nature,  —  the  splendors 
of  a  winter  daybreak  over  the  wide  waste  of  snow 
seen  from  the  windows,  the  glories  of  the  autumnal 
woods,  the  gloomy  approaches  of  the  thunder-storm, 
and  its  departure  amid  sunshine  and  rainbow,  the 
return  of  spring  with  its  flowers,  and  the  first  snow 
fall  of  winter." 

In  1812  he  entered  a  law-office,  dividing  his  time 
between  the  study  of  law  and  the  writing  of  poetry. 
Three  years  later  he  passed  his  examination,  and 
settled  for  practice  at  Plainfield,  a  village  seven  miles 
from  his  home.  To  a  circumstance  connected  with 
his  settling  there,  we  owe  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
short  poems  in  our  literature,  the  lines  "  To  a  Water 
fowl." 

It  was  a  chill    December  afternoon  on  which  he 


88     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

started  to  walk  from  home  to  Plainfield.  He  was  in 
the  flush  of  youth,  just  twenty-two,  —  conscious  of 
powers  not  untried  that  could  give  him  hope  to  attain 
eminence  some  day.  He  was  about  to  enter  a  pro 
fession  to  which  he  had  not  given  his  heart,  but  must 
give  his  time,  if  he  wished  to  make  even  a  livelihood 
by  it.  He  was  alone,  depressed  by  the  uncertainty  of 
the  future,  impatient  of  the  exactions  of  the  present ; 
suddenly,  at  sunset,  across  the  flush  of  the  western 
sky,  he  saw  a  solitary  waterfowl  winging  its  way 
southward.  He  was  in  that  susceptible  mood  in 
which  the  poet  finds  his  lessons  and  sets  them  to  the 
music  of  eloquent  speech,  and  as  he  paused  to  watch 
the  bird's  unerring  flight  across  the  crimson  sky,  his 
desolation  and  despair  softened  into  the  tenderest 
and  deepest  trust  that  the  Power  whose  care  taught 
this  waterfowl  its 

"  way  along  that  pathless  coast 
The  desert  and  illimitable  air, 
Lone  wandering,  but  not  lost," 

would  of  a  surety  lead  his  steps  aright  in  the  long 
way  that  he  must  tread  alone.  That  night  the  poem 
"  To  a  Waterfowl  "  was  written.  It  is  a  picture  and 
a  mood  wrought  into  exquisite  verse.  The  dreary 
winter  landscape,  the  sunset  glow,  the  solitary  bird, 
the  thought  of  Infinity  guiding  its  flight,  the  calm, 
deep  trust  growing  out  of  this  thought,  are  faultlessly 
rendered. 

Bryant's  law  practice  proved  fairly  successful,  and 
he  did  not  abandon  it  until  his  assumption  of  the 
control  of  the  "  Literary  Review "  and  his  removal 
to  New  York  in  1825.  Four  years  prior  to  this 


William  Cullen  Bryant  89 

event  he  had  married  a  farmer's  daughter,  Miss 
Fanny  Fairchild,  and  published  a  small  volume  of 
poems  that  had  secured  a  widespread  recognition 
of  his  merits. 

The  "Literary  Review  "  did  not  prove  a  successful 
venture,  and  during  his  second  year's  residence  in 
New  York  Bryant  was  appointed  assistant  editor  of 
the  "  New  York  Evening  Post."  Three  years  later 
he  became  the  editor-in-chief,  which  connection  he 
retained  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Poetry  was  not 
entirely  abandoned  for  journalism,  but  it  certainly 
suffered  from  the  exactions  of  its  rival.  The  best 
and  the  greater  part  of  his  poetry  was  written  before 
his  fortieth  year.  His  connection  with  the  "Post" 
brought  him  a  handsome  income,  and  enabled  him 
to  indulge  a  taste  for  travel. 

He  made  six  visits  to  Europe,  saw  Egypt  and  the 
Holy  Land,  and  travelled  in  Cuba  and  Mexico.  His 
descriptive  letters  to  the  "Post"  during  his  travels 
rarely  rise  above  mediocrity.  The  best  of  them 
have  been  collected  in  two  volumes,  entitled,  respec 
tively,  "  Letters  of  a  Traveller  "  and  "  Letters  from 
the  East."  Besides  these  two  volumes,  Bryant's 
prose  consists  chiefly  of  orations,  addresses,  and 
editorial  criticisms  and  comments.  But  his  prose  is 
of  little  enduring  value.  It  lacks  elasticity,  nervous 
energy,  the  terseness,  directness,  and  glow  of  thoughts 
that  have  forced  their  utterance  and  made  a  style 
for  themselves.  It  is  even  and  dignified,  but  it 
bears  the  impress  of  hack  work,  —  themes  selected 
for  him  by  societies  that  clamored  for  addresses,  and 
newspaper  columns  that  clamored  to  be  filled. 

His  criticisms  lack  vitality,  for  he  was  not  a  pro- 


90     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

found  thinker.  He  did  not  assimilate  the  far-reach 
ing  scientific  generalizations  of  his  age,  but  sneered 
at  evolution  without  taking  the  pains  to  comprehend 
its  teachings. 

But,  viewed  as  a  journalist,  Bryant  was  a  most 
painstaking  and  conscientious  writer.  Until  the  close 
of  the  Civil  War,  he  was  almost  a  daily  contributor 
to  the  "  Evening  Post,"  but  he  was  never  unmind 
ful  of  the  responsibilities  of  his  position.  Says 
a  writer  in  the  "Post,"  at  the  time  of  Bryant's 
death :  — 

"According  to  one  theory  of  journalism,  to-day  is  the 
whole  of  life,  and  to  let  to-morrow  take  care  of  itself  is  a  part 
of  newspaper  religion.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  practice 
of  this  theory  is  effective.  To  treat  what  is  uppermost  to-day, 
simply  because  it  is  uppermost,  without  caring  what  may  be 
uppermost  to-morrow  ;  to  fix  the  reader's  attention  to-day,  no 
matter  where  his  attention  may  be  to-morrow,  —  to  do  this, 
certainly  is  to  make  an  entertaining  newspaper,  if  not  a  use 
ful  one.  This  was  not  Mr.  Bryant's  theory.  To  him  to-day 
was  by  no  means  the  whole  of  life,  and  he  was  not  disposed 
to  let  to-morrow  take  care  of  itself.  On  the  contrary,  to-day 
was  chiefly  valuable  to  him  so  far  as  it  provided  for  to 
morrow.  That  is  to  say,  he  used  the  newspaper  con 
scientiously  to  advocate  views  of  political  and  social  subjects 
which  he  believed  to  be  correct.  He  set  before  himself 
principles  whose  prevalence  he  regarded  as  beneficial  to  the 
country  or  to  the  world,  and  his  constant  purpose  was  to 
promote  their  prevalence.  He  looked  upon  the  journal 
which  he  conducted  as  a  conscientious  statesman  looks  upon 
the  official  trust  which  has  been  committed  to  him,  or  the 
work  which  he  has  undertaken,  —  not  with  a  view  to  do 
what  is  to  be  done  to-day  in  the  easiest  or  most  brilliant 
way,  but  so  to  do  it  that  it  may  tell  upon  what  is  to  be 


William  Cullen  Bryant  91 

done  to-morrow,  and  all  other  days,  until  the  worthiest 
object  of  ambition  is  achieved.  This  is  the  most  useful 
journalism,  and,  first  and  last,  it  is  the  most  effective  and 
influential." 

In  politics  Bryant  never  servilely  followed  any 
party,  but  criticised  men  and  measures  opposed 
to  his  judgment,  irrespective  of  party.  He  was  an 
advocate  of  free  trade,  a  supporter  of  President  Jack 
son's  course  in  regard  to  the  United  States  banks, 
a  zealous  opponent  of  the  Texas  annexation,  and,  at 
first,  a  Free  Soil  Democrat.  He  joined  the  Repub 
lican  party  in  1856  to  oppose  the  extension  of  slavery. 
Reciprocity  treaties  with  other  countries  were  the 
subject  of  his  last  journalistic  work. 

In  1866  Bryant's  wife  died.  He  had  already  made 
translations  from  the  "  Odyssey  "  some  three  years 
before  the  death  of  his  wife,  and  now,  feeling  the  need 
of  that  distraction  from  grief  which  is  most  success 
fully  found  in  occupation,  he  set  himself  the  task  of 
making  a  complete  translation  of  Homer,  and  finished 
his  task  in  1872.  He  was  now  an  old  man,  but  still 
hearty  and  hale  and  in  frequent  requisition  for  ora 
tions  and  addresses.  On  the  twenty-ninth  of  May, 
1878,  he  delivered  an  oration  in  Central  Park,  New 
York,  at  the  unveiling  of  a  statue  to  the  Italian  patriot, 
Mazzini.  He  spoke  with  uncovered  head  in  the 
glaring  sunlight,  and  shortly  afterward,  in  ascending 
the  steps  of  the  house  of  a  friend  with  whom  he  had 
been  invited  to  dine,  he  suddenly  fell  backward,  strik 
ing  his  head  against  the  platform  step.  Concussion  of 
the  brain  resulted.  He  was  driven  home,  but  never 
recovered.  His  death  took  place  two  weeks  later,  on 
the  twelfth  qf  June.  He  was  buried  at  Roslyn,  Long 


92     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Island,  in  which  place  he  had  made  his  home  for 
many  years.  Some  time  before  his  death,  and  in 
anticipation  of  it,  his  fine  library  was  divided  between 
his  native  village,  Cummington,  and  his  later  home, 
Roslyn. 

In  person,  Bryant  was  spare  and  short  of  stature. 
In  his  youth  he  had  a  profusion  of  light  brown  hair, 
which  became  snowy  white  in  age.  Hawthorne,  who 
saw  him  in  Rome  in  1858,  describes  him  as  having 
"  a  forehead  impending  yet  not  massive  ;  dark,  bushy 
eyebrows,  and  keen  eyes  without  much  softness  in 
them ;  a  dark  and  sallow  complexion,  and  a  slender 
figure  bent  a  little  with  age."  Hawthorne  also  gives 
it  as  his  opinion  that  Bryant  was  "  rather  cold,"  and 
says  that  "  he  shook  hands  kindly  but  not  with  any 
warmth  of  grip."  A  few  years  before  this,  while 
travelling  in  Germany,  Bryant  had  written  Dana  that 
a  Leipsic  paper  had  described  him  as  "  a  little,  dry, 
lean,  old  man." 

In  disposition,  Bryant  is  said  to  have  been  retiring 
even  to  the  point  of  bashfulness.  This  reserve,  often 
associated  with  deep  and  tender  feeling,  is  apt  to  be 
mistaken  for  coldness  and  pride.  But  Bryant  was 
neither  cold  nor  proud.  He  never  thought  highly  of 
his  achievements  in  verse,  and  when  on  his  return 
from  Europe  in  1836,  a  complimentary  dinner  was 
tendered  him  by  the  New  York  authors  and  public 
men,  he  declined  it  on  the  plea  that  he  had  done 
nothing  to  merit  such  a  distinction. 

An  associate  editor,  speaking  of  Bryant's  tenderness 
for  the  feelings  of  others,  says  that  he  cautioned  him 
once  in  this  way:  "I  wish  you  would  deal  very 
gently  with  poets,  especially  with  the  weaker  ones." 


William  Cullen  Bryant  93 

"  Later,"  continues  the  editor,  "  I  had  a  very  bad 
case  of  poetic  idiocy  to  deal  with,  and  as  Mr.  Bryant 
happened  to  come  into  my  room  while  I  was  debat 
ing  the  matter  in  my  mind,  I  said  to  him  that  I  was 
embarrassed  by  his  injunction  to  deal  gently  with 
poets,  and  pointed  out  to  him  the  utter  impossibility 
of  finding  anything  to  praise  or  even  lightly  to  con 
demn  in  the  book  before  me.  After  I  had  read 
some  of  the  stanzas  to  him,  he  answered :  '  No,  you 
can't  praise  it,  of  course ;  it  won't  do  to  lie  about  it, 
but,'  turning  the  volume  over  in  his  hands  and  inspect 
ing  it,  'you  might  say  that  the  binding  is  securely 
put  on,  and  that  —  well,  the  binder  has  planed  the 
edges  pretty  smooth.' " 

Bryant  had  no  affectations  either  in  personal  man 
ner  or  in  literary  style.  There  is  extant  a  letter  of 
his  filled  with  valuable  advice  to  a  young  man  who 
had  asked  for  a  criticism  upon  an  article  he  had 
written.  In  the  course  of  his  reply,  Bryant  says :  — 

"  Be  simple,  unaffected ;  be  honest  in  your  speaking  and 
writing.  Never  use  a  long  word  when  a  short  one  will  do  as 
well.  Call  a  spade  by  its  name,  not  a  well-known  oblong  in 
strument  of  manual  labor ;  let  a  home  be  a  home,  and  not  a 
residence ;  a  place,  not  a  locality ;  and  so  on  of  the  rest. 
When  a  short  word  will  do,  you  will  always  lose  by  a  long 
one.  You  lose  in  clearness,  you  lose  in  honest  expression  of 
meaning,  and  in  the  estimation  of  all  men  who  are  capable  of 
judging,  you  lose  in  reputation  for  ability. 

"  The  only  true  way  to  shine  in  this  false  world  is  to  be 
modest  and  unassuming.  Falsehood  may  be  a  thick  crust, 
but  in  the  course  of  time  truth  will  find  a  place  to  break 
through.  Elegance  of  language  may  not  be  in  the  power  of 
us  all,  but  simplicity  and  straightforwardness  are." 


94     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Simplicity  and  straightforwardness  were  eminently 
in  Bryant's  power.  There  is  neither  an  artificial  nor 
an  obscure  line  in  all  the  poetry  he  has  written.  To 
be  sure,  this  is  not  the  highest  praise  that  can  be  given 
to  a  poet,  but  it  is  one  of  the  elements  of  the  highest 
praise  that  can  be  given  to  expression.  Bryant  is 
not  a  poet  of  the  widest  range.  Neither  the  ardors 
and  generous  enthusiasms  of  youth,  nor  the  calmer 
affections  of  social  and  domestic  life,  find  a  place 
in  his  verse.  A  few  of  his  poems  will  die  only 
with  the  English  tongue,  but  the  bulk  of  his  poetry 
is  not  of  a  character  to  take  a  deep  hold  on  the 
heart. 

Bryant  has  been  called  the  American  Wordsworth, 
but  in  vigor  of  thought,  in  range,  and  in  feeling,  he 
ranks  far  below  his  English  rival.  Both  are  poets  of 
nature  in  the  sense  that  nature  is  the  chief  source  of 
inspiration  and  the  theme  of  both,  but  the  difference 
between  Bryant  and  Wordsworth  is  the  difference 
between  I  like  and  I  love,  —  between  the  whitish  blue 
of  the  noonday  sky  and  the  morning  and  evening  red. 
With  Bryant,  the  love  of  nature  produces  a  grave  and 
calm  elevation  of  sentiment  tinged  with  gentle  melan 
choly.  Thoughts  of  death,  pious  resignation,  and 
unfaltering  faith  in  immortality  are  almost  invariably 
aroused  in  him  by  the  contemplation  of  natural 
beauty.  An  ever-recurrent  thought  with  him  is 
the  impassiveness  of  nature,  her  unchanging  beauty 
and  incessant  variety  in  the  presence  of  the  life, 
birth,  and  death  of  the  individual.  This  thought 
is  the  keynote  to  "  Thanatopsis,"  his  first  master 
piece.  It  reappears  in  his  lines  "  To  the  Apen 
nines"  :  — 


William  Cullen  Bryant  95 

"  Below  you  lie  men's  sepulchres,  the  old 
Etrurian  Tombs,  the  graves  of  yesterday  ; 
The  herd's  white  bones  lie  mixed  with  human  mould, 
Yet  up  the  radiant  steeps  that  I  survey 
Death  never  climbed,  nor  life's  soft  breath  with  pain 
Was  yielded  to  the  elements  again." 

"  The  Rivulet "  voices  the  same  sentiment :  — 

"  Thou  changest  not 
Since  first  thy  pleasant  banks  I  ranged; 
And  the  grave  stranger  come  to  see 
The  play-place  of  his  infancy, 
Has  scarce  a  single  trace  of  him 
Who  sported  once  upon  thy  brim. 
The  visions  of  my  youth, 
Too  bright,  too  beautiful  to  last,  are  past. 
I  've  tried  the  world,  —  it  wears  no  more 
The  coloring  of  romance  it  wore. 
Yet  well  has  nature  kept  the  truth 
She  promised  to  my  earliest  youth ; 
The  radiant  beauty  shed  abroad 
On  all  the  glorious  works  of  God, 
Shows  freshly  to  my  sobered  eye 
Each  charm  it  wore  in  days  gone  by. 

And  I  shall  sleep  —  and  on  thy  side, 

As  ages  after  ages  glide, 

Children  their  early  sports  shall  try 

And  pass  to  hoary  age  and  die ; 

But  thou,  unchanged  from  year  to  year, 

Gayly  shalt  play  and  glitter  here  ; 

Amid  young  flowers  and  tender  grass 

Thy  endless  infancy  shall  pass, 

And  singing  down  thy  narrow  glen 

Shall  mock  the  fading  race  of  men." 

Wordsworth,  on  the  contrary,  feels  in  the  presence 
of  nature  a  deep  joy,  —  a  rapturous  stirring  of  the 


96     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

pulses  that  arouses  in  him  a  sense  of  fulness  of  life. 
In  his  exquisite  ode  "  Lines  on  Revisiting  the  Banks 
of  the  Wye,"  perhaps  the  finest  expression  of  love  of 
nature  ever  penned,  Wordsworth  shows  the  extraor 
dinary  character  of  the  emotions  awakened  in  him 
by  natural  beauty  :  — 

"  For  nature 

To  me  was  all  in  all,  —  I  cannot  paint 
What  then  I  was.     The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion  ;  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colors  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite,  a  feeling,  and  a  love 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm 
By  thought  supplied,  or  any  interest 
Unborrowed  from  the  eye  ;  that  time  is  past, 
And  all  its  aching  joys  are  now  no  more, 
And  all  its  dizzy  raptures." 

There  are  no  "  aching  joys,"  no  "  dizzy  raptures*'  in 
Bryant's  love.  Contrast  these  lines  of  Wordsworth 
with  the  following  lines  from  Bryant's  "  Winter- 
Piece,"  in  which  he  expresses  the  same  thought,  and 
the  charge  of  coldness  so  often  brought  against  the 
American  poet  will  be  understood :  — 

"  The  time  has  been  that  these  wild  solitudes 
Yet  beautiful  as  wild,  were  trod  by  me 
Oftener  than  now  ;  and  when  the  ills  of  life 
Had  chafed  my  spirit,  —  when  the  unsteady  pulse 
Beat  with  strange  flutterings,  I  would  wander  forth 
And  seek  the  woods.     The  sunshine  on  my  path 
Was  to  me  a  friend.     The  swelling  hills, 
The  quiet  dells  retiring  far  between, 
With  gentle  invitation  to  explore 
Their  windings,  were  a  calm  society 


William  Cullen  Bryant  97 

That  talked  with  me.     Then  the  chant 

Of  birds  and  chime  of  brooks  and  soft  caress 

Of  the  fresh  sylvan  air,  made  me  forget 

The  thoughts  that  broke  my  peace,  and  I  began 

To  gather  simples  by  the  fountain's  brink, 

And  lose  myself  in  day-dreams ;  while  I  stood 

In  nature's  loneliness  I  was  with  one 

With  whom  I  early  grew  familiar,  one 

Who  never  had  a  frown  for  me,  whose  voice 

Never  rebuked  me  for  the  hours  I  stole 

From  cares  I  loved  not,  but  of  which  the  world 

Deems  highest,  to  converse  with  her." 

Bryant  seeks  nature  to  allay  the  excitement  of 
worldly  cares,  to  calm  and  soothe  him,  and  afford  him 
matter  and  opportunity  for  quiet  thought  or  pleasant 
reverie.  Wordsworth  seeks  nature  to  find  an  excite 
ment  the  world  cannot  give,  a  joyous  abandonment, 
a  spiritual  exaltation.  With  the  one,  nature  was  a 
source  of  recreation ;  with  the  other,  a  passion.  It  is 
the  emotional  element  that  gives  to  verse  its  heart- 
stirring  power,  and  it  is  this  element  that  is  feeble 
in  Bryant.  He  had,  however,  a  true  conception  of 
poetry.  He  believed  that  it  should  touch  the  heart, 
excite  the  imagination,  and  appeal  to  the  understand 
ing.  "  To  write  fine  poetry,"  he  says,  "  requires  intel 
lectual  faculties  of  the  highest  order,  and  among  these 
not  the  least  important  is  the  faculty  of  reason." 

The  most  general  favorites  among  his  poems,  and 
those  by  which  he  will  most  likely  be  remembered, 
are  "  Thanatopsis,"  "  To  a  Waterfowl,"  "Forest 
Hymn,"  "  June,"  "  The  Death  of  the  Flowers,"  "  The 
Gladness  of  Nature,"  "  To  a  Yellow  Violet,"  "  The 
Planting  of  the  Apple-Tree,"  and  "The  Fringed 
Gentian." 

7 


98     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

In  his  poem  entitled  "  The  Battlefield  "  are  to  be 
found  these  often  quoted  lines :  — 

"  Truth  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again ; 

The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers : 

But  error,  wounded,  writhes  with  pain, 

And  dies  among  her  worshippers." 


CHAPTER   VI 

WILLIAM   HICKLING   PRESCOTT   (1796-1859) 

CARLYLE'S  definition  of  history  as  a  biography 
of  nations  is  as  good  as  it  is  brief.  This  defini 
tion  implies  in  the  historian  not  only  that  which  we 
look  for  in  a  successful  biographer,  —  sympathy  with 
his  subject,  familiarity  with  facts  concerning  it,  the 
power  of  selection,  knowledge  of  man,  the  ability  to 
tell  clearly  and  vividly  what  he  knows  and  feels,  —  but 
it  implies  a  still  rarer  faculty,  that  of  perceiving  the 
subtle  influences  that  work  out  events,  embodying 
themselves  now  in  a  creed,  now  in  a  political  institu 
tion,  and  again  in  the  indomitable  passions  of  men  in 
power.  We  ask,  too,  of  an  historian  that  he  shall 
be  more  impartial  than  the  biographer,  that  he  shall 
have  no  pet  theory  by  which  to  interpret  what  he 
relates,  —  that,  rather  than  this,  he  shall  give  us  the 
bare  facts  and  let  us  draw  our  own  conclusions.  But 
if  he  be  a  man  of  feeling  and  judgment  like  Motley, 
we  shall  not  quarrel  with  him  if  in  narrating  infamous 
wrongs,  he  lets  us  feel  the  beatings  of  his  own  heart 
and  see  the  flush  of  indignation  in  his  cheeks.  Or  if 
he  have  the  vivid  descriptive  power  of  Prescott,  who 
sometimes  abuses  it,  we  shall  be  glad  of  the  play  of 
life  and  color  in  his  pages. 

Our  best  historians,  Prescott,  Motley,  and  Francis 
Parkman,  had  these  gifts  in  a  more  or  less  marked 


ioo     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

degree.  Bancroft's  voluminous  history  of  the  Colo 
nial  and  Revolutionary  periods  preceding  the  adop 
tion  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a 
storehouse  of  valuable  facts,  and  has  many  admirable 
pages,  but  these  facts  are  not  presented  in  an  attrac 
tive  way,  and  the  book,  as  a  whole,  lacks  compact 
ness,  as  it  lacks  perspective.  Bancroft  views  every 
thing  too  close  at  hand,  and  thus  events  do  not  assume 
with  him  their  relative  proportions.  Prescott  chose 
for  his  themes  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
the  conquest  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  and  the  history  of 
Philip  the  Second  of  Spain ;  Motley  chose  the  strug 
gle  of  the  Netherlands  against  Spanish  tyranny,  and 
Parkman  the  conflict  between  France  and  England 
for  the  possession  of  North  America. 

Few  lives  are  more  encouraging  than  Prescott's 
and  Parkman's  as  a  story  of  successful  achievement 
in  the  face  of  almost  insurmountable  obstacles.  Both 
men  struggled  with  failing  sight  in  the  midst  of  a 
mass  of  material  for  study  that  might  have  wearied 
the  strongest  pair  of  eyes,  and  both  wrote  with  a 
vividness  and  minuteness  of  descriptive  power  that 
recall  Milton's  keen  and  far-searching  inward  sight. 

William  Hickling  Prescott  was  born  in  Salem, 
Massachusetts,  May  4,  1796.  His  grandfather,  Colo 
nel  Prescott,  commanded  the  Americans  at  the  battle 
of  Bunker  Hill.  His  father,  an  eminent  and  wealthy 
lawyer,  removed  with  his  family  to  Boston  in  1808, 
where  young  William  was  prepared  for  Harvard. 
He  entered  the  Sophomore  class  in  his  sixteenth 
year,  and  was  a  good  Greek  and  Latin  scholar,  so  far 
as  an  acquaintance  with  the  principles  of  these  lan 
guages  goes,  but  he  hated  mathematics.  Having 


William  Hickling  Prescott  101 

proved  to  his  instructor  in  geometry  that  he  could 
commit  to  memory  the  required  demonstrations  with 
out  understanding  a  word  of  what  he  was  reciting  so 
glibly,  he  was  excused  from  further  displays  of  mem 
ory,  and  allowed  to  follow  his  own  tastes  in  study. 
He  was  a  handsome,  fun-loving,  social  boy,  not 
naturally  studious,  but  ambitious,  and  with  a  proper 
estimate  of  the  advantages  of  a  good  education. 
Therefore  he  spurred  himself  to  his  tasks  by  making 
resolutions  and  binding  himself  to  pay  a  forfeit  if  they 
were  not  rigidly  kept, —  a  practice  that  he  continued 
throughout  life. 

The  accident  whose  terrible  consequences  deprived 
him  of  the  use  of  one  eye  and  permanently  weakened 
the  other,  occurred  in  his  Junior  year.  One  day  just 
after  dinner,  as  he  was  leaving  the  dining-hall  at  col 
lege,  he  looked  back  to  see  the  cause  of  some  dis 
turbance  that  was  going  on  in  the  room.  A  hard 
piece  of  bread  thrown  at  random  by  one  of  the  stu 
dents,  struck  his  left  eye  and  felled  him  to  the  ground. 
The  retina  was  paralyzed,  and  though  the  eye  showed 
no  evidence  of  blindness,  no  mark  of  the  blow,  he 
never  again  saw  with  it.  The  right  eye,  weakened 
through  sympathy,  so  seriously  troubled  him  at  inter 
vals  all  his  life,  that  for  months  at  a  time  he  was 
obliged  to  be  shut  in  a  darkened  room.  He  was  also 
subject  to  acute  attacks  of  rheumatism,  and  the  neces 
sity  of  preserving  his  health  for  the  sake  of  his  eyes 
induced  him  to  form  regular  habits  of  retiring  and 
taking  exercise.  He  went  to  bed  at  half-past  ten, 
rose  early,  but  not  without  effort,  charging  his  ser 
vant  to  call  him,  and  paying  him  a  forfeit  whenever 
he  failed  to  respond  to  the  call.  He  took  daily 


IO2     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

exercise  on  horseback  in  his  early  years ;  and,  later, 
walked  from  four  to  six  miles  daily.  Ticknor,  his 
biographer,  says :  — 

"  If  a  violent  storm  prevented  him  from  going  out,  or  if  the 
bright  snow  on  sunny  days  in  winter  rendered  it  dangerous 
for  him  to  expose  his  eye  to  its  brilliant  reflection,  he  would 
dress  himself  as  for  the  street,  and  walk  vigorously  about  the 
colder  parts  of  the  house,  or  he  would  saw  and  chop  fire 
wood,  under  cover,  being,  in  the  latter  case,  read  to  all  the 
while." 

He  had  intended  to  follow  the  law  as  a  profession, 
but  the  state  of  his  eyes  interfered  with  unremitting 
application;  and  in  1815,  in  the  hope  of  improving  his 
health,  he  set  sail  for  the  Azores.  His  mother's 
father,  Thomas  Hickling,  was  then  United  States 
Consul  at  St.  Michael's  Island,  one  of  the  Azores, 
and  had  a  charming  country-house  near  the  capital  of 
the  island.  Here  William  stayed  with  his  grandfather 
about  seven  months,  and  then  set  sail  for  London  to 
consult  the  best  oculists  there.  But  nothing  could  be 
done  for  his  eyes,  and  he  visited  Paris,  passed  the 
winter  in  Italy,  revisited  England,  and  returned  to 
America  in  1817. 

His  sight  had  not  improved,  and  he  was  forced  to 
abandon  his  project  of  studying  law,  and  began  to 
think  of  literature  as  a  profession.  His  father's  cir 
cumstances  assured  him  a  competency,  and  he  could 
afford  to  give  himself  ample  time  for  preparation.  In 
1820  he  was  happily  married  to  Susan  Amory. 

Ticknor  says  that  at  the  time  of  his  marriage  Pres- 
cott  was  one  of  the  finest-looking  men  he  had  ever 
seen,  —  "  tall,  well-formed,  manly  in  his  bearing  but 


William  Hickling  Prescott  103 

gentle,  with  light  brown  hair  that  was  hardly  changed 
or  diminished  by  years,  with  a  clear  complexion,  and 
a  ruddy  flush  on  his  cheek  that  kept  for  him  to  the 
last  an  appearance  01  comparative  youth,  but  above 
all  with  a  smile  that  was  the  most  absolutely  con 
tagious  I  ever  looked  upon." 

This  smile  was  the  index  of  the  cheeriest  nature 
with  which  a  man  was  ever  gifted.  No  difficulty  ever 
frightened  him;  no  pain,  no  trial  ever  eclipsed  the 
sunshine  within  him.  A  friend  once  said  of  him,  "  He 
could  be  happy  in  more  ways,  and  more  happy  in 
every  one  of  them,  than  any  other  person  I  have  ever 
known."  Even  when  shut  up  in  his  darkened  room 
on  account  of  his  eyes,  or  confined  to  his  bed  with 
rheumatic  pains,  his  irrepressible  gayety  made  his 
room  the  cheeriest  in  the  house. 

Before  entering  upon  any  definite  literary  work, 
Prescott  planned  for  himself,  in  1821,  a  course  of 
study  beginning  with  that  of  English,  as  follows :  — 

"  i.    Principles  of  grammar,  correct  writing,  etc. 

"  2.   Compendious  history  of  North  America. 

"  3.  Fine  prose  writers  of  English  from  Roger  Ascham  to 
the  present  day,  principally  with  reference  to  their  modes  of 
writing,  —  not  including  historians,  except  as  far  as  requisite 
for  an  acquaintance  with  style. 

"  4.   Latin  classics  one  hour  a  day." 

He  went  to  work  with  Blair's  Rhetoric  and  Lindley 
Murray's  Grammar ;  then  read  all  the  great  English 
classics  for  nearly  a  year.  He  next  took  up  French, 
reading  from  Froissart  to  Chateaubriand ;  then  he 
mastered  Italian  and  wished  to  take  up  German,  but 
the  weakness  of  his  sight  led  him  to  give  up  for  the 


104     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

time  the  pursuit  of  so  difficult  a  language,  and  he 
began  the  study  of  Spanish  instead.  This  was  a 
fortunate  choice,  for  it  soon  led  him  into  those  re 
searches  which  culminated  in  a  resolve  to  write  the 
history  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella. 

In  1826  he  earnestly  set  about  collecting  material, 
undismayed  by  all  the  difficulties  he  had  to  encounter. 
The  shades  and  shutters  in  his  study  had  to  be  regu 
lated  to  admit  just  the  amount  of  light,  and  no  more, 
that  his  weak  eye  could  bear.  Sometimes  he  could 
use  it  only  half  an  hour  a  day.  He  employed  a 
secretary  to  read  for  him,  and  trained  his  memory  so 
that  he  could  carry  in  it  sixty  printed  pages  for  dicta 
tion.  He  had  received  his  material  from  Madrid,  and 
"  in  my  disabled  condition,"  he  writes  in  one  of  his 
prefaces,  uwith  my  transatlantic  treasures  lying 
around  me,  I  was  like  one  pining  from  hunger  in  the 
midst  of  abundance.  In  this  state,  I  resolved  to  make 
the  ear  if  possible  do  the  work  of  the  eye.  I  procured 
the  services  of  a  secretary  who  read  to  me  the  various 
authorities,  and  in  time  I  became  so  familiar  with  the 
sounds  of  the  different  foreign  languages  (to  some  of 
which  I  had  been  previously  accustomed  by  a  resi 
dence  abroad)  that  I  could  comprehend  the  reading 
without  much  difficulty."  He  wrote  with  an  ivory 
style,  and  to  guide  his  hand  in  writing,  employed  a 
framework  similar  to  that  used  by  the  blind,  enclosing 
sixteen  parallel  brass  wires.  These  wires  rested  on 
blackened  paper,  underneath  which  was  a  sheet  of 
white  paper. 

In  June,  1836,  he  had  finished  the  last  chapter  in 
the  "  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,"  and  offered 
the  book  to  the  London  publisher  Murray,  who  de- 


William  Hickling  Prescott  105 

clined  it.  Longman  also  declined  it;  but  it  was 
finally  accepted  by  Richard  Bentley,  and  published  in 
December,  1837.  It  was  a  decided  success  from  the 
first.  In  1839  the  "  Conquest  of  Mexico  "  was  begun, 
and  it  was  published  in  1843.  A  period  of  what 
Prescott  called  "  literary  loafing  "  followed,  and  then 
he  set  to  work  on  the  "  Conquest  of  Peru,"  which 
appeared  in  1847.  The  next  year  he  began  prepara 
tions  for  the  "  History  of  the  Reign  of  Philip  the 
Second,"  only  three  volumes  of  which  he  lived  to 
complete. 

In  1850  he  sailed  for  England,  where  he  was  a 
great  favorite  wherever  he  went.  He  was  presented 
to  the  Queen,  and  met  Macaulay,  Dean  Milman, 
Hallam,  Lockhart  the  son-in-law  and  biographer  of 
Scott,  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell 
the  eminent  geologist. 

On  the  fourth  of  February,  1858,  he  was  stricken 
with  apoplexy  in  his  home  in  Boston,  but  recovered 
from  the  attack.  He  suffered  a  second  and  fatal 
stroke  on  the  twenty-eighth  of  January,  1859.  Long 
fellow  records  speaking  with  him  in  Boston  just  a 
few  days  before  his  death :  — 

"I  met  him  in  Washington  Street  just  at  the  foot  of 
Winter  Street.  He  was  merry  and  laughing  as  usual.  At 
the  close  of  the  conversation  he  said  :  '  I  am  going  to  shave 
off  my  whiskers,  they  are  growing  gray.'  'Gray  hair  is 
becoming,'  I  said.  'Becoming!'  said  he,  'what  do  we 
care  about  becoming  who  must  so  soon  be  going  ? '  l  Then 
why  take  the  trouble  to  shave  them  off?7  'That's  true!' 
he  replied  with  a  pleasant  laugh,  and  crossed  over  to  Sum 
mer  Street.  So  my  last  remembrance  of  him  is  a  sunny 
smile  at  the  corner  of  a  street. " 


106     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

It  was  a  pleasant  remembrance  of  one  whose 
scholarly  labors  could  not  suppress  his  sunny  social 
nature,  nor  prevent  him  from  finding  time  to  endear 
himself  to  a  multitude  of  friends. 

As  an  historian,  Prescott  still  retains  his  popularity 
with  the  great  majority  of  readers,  in  spite  of  his 
later  critics  who  find  him  wanting  in  philosophical 
insight,  and  complain  that  his  books  read  like  tales 
from  the  "  Arabian  Nights."  It  is  true  that  he  loaded 
his  palette  with  too  many  colors,  that  he  has  an 
eye  for  all  romantic  episodes  and  dramatic  situations, 
and  that  all  those  external  details  which  a  staid 
historian  suppresses  to  get  at  his  fact  sometimes 
seem  that  for  which  Prescott  relates  his  fact.  But 
he  wished  to  produce  the  life,  color,  and  movement 
of  a  panorama;  and  he  succeeded.  This  is  why  he 
continues  readable  in  spite  of  the  critics.  Yet  he 
censured  Carlyle  severely  to  Bancroft  for  running 
altogether  into  dramatic  or  rather  picturesque  effect, 
and  thought  the  "French  Revolution"  a  work  in 
very  bad  taste,  and  could  not  read  it  through  with 
patience.  Prescott,  however,  has  nothing  of  Carlyle's 
strained,  spasmodic  style,  nor  is  he  a  violent  partisan. 
Indeed,  we  often  miss  in  him  the  burst  of  honest 
indignation,  the  stinging  sarcastic  lash  at  infamy 
which  make  us  feel  in  Motley  and  Carlyle  that  they 
wrote  with  the  heart  as  well  as  with  the  head. 

The  "  History  of  the  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella  "  comprises  a  view  of  the  Castilian  monarchy 
before  the  fifteenth  century;  the  establishment  of 
the  Inquisition,  and  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews ;  the 
conquest  of  the  Moorish  kingdom  of  Granada;  the 
Italian  wars,  and  the  discoveries  of  Columbus. 


William  Hickling  Prescott  107 

The  "  Conquest  of  Mexico  "  opens  with  a  view  of 
Aztec  civilization.     The  country  of  the  ancient  Mex 
icans  or  Aztecs,  part  of  which  the  Spaniards  denuded 
of  trees  so  that  its  bareness  might  remind  them  of 
their   own  Castile,    is    graphically    described.      The 
story  of  the  Aztecs  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  gleaned 
from  tradition  is  admirably  told.     Their  mythology, 
sacerdotal  rites,  and  progress  in  the  arts  are  minutely 
described.     The  subsequent  history  of  the  discovery 
of  Mexico  during  the  reign  of  Charles  V. ;  the  expe 
dition  of  Cortes  under  the  auspices  of  the  governor 
of  Cuba ;  the  deliberate  burning  of  the  ships,  that, 
hope  of  return  being   taken  from  the  faint-hearted, 
they  might  throw  themselves   into  the  new  venture 
with  the  courage  of  desperation ;   the  almost  incred 
ible  sufferings  of  the  Spaniards ;  the  barbaric  splen 
dors  of  the  city  of  Mexico ;  the  superstitions  of  the 
people  ;  their  horrible  religious  rites ;  their  pusillani 
mous  Emperor  Montezuma;    the  long  parley;    the 
dreadful  retreat;    the  final  siege  of  three  months; 
the  horrible  sufferings  of  the  starving  inhabitants; 
the  fall  and   plunder  of  the  city,  and  the  subsequent 
career  of  Cortes,  —  all  this  is  told  with  a  fulness  of 
description,  an  energy  of  movement,  that  never  cease 
for  a  moment.     The  reader  is  hurried  on  breathlessly 
from  spectacle  to  spectacle,  and  in  his  lively  interest 
forgets   to   be    critical,    forgets    everything    but   the 
narrative  before   him.     Such   an  absorption   on   the 
part  of  an  intelligent  reader  is  an  evidence  of  uncom 
mon    skill    in    the    author.       Prescott    undoubtedly 
makes  his   readers   see  and  feel,  and  it  is  useless  to 
argue  against  a  sensation. 

Prescott  is  inclined  to  believe  in  an  Asiatic  origin 


io8     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

of  Aztec  civilization.  He  bases  his  belief  upon  com 
parative  analysis,  and  upon  traditions  of  a  Western  or 
Northwestern  origin  preserved  among  the  Mexicans 
orally  and  in  their  hieroglyphical  maps.  The  physical 
traits  of  the  Aztecs  approached  the  Mongolian  type ; 
the  pyramidal  structure,  the  terrace-formed  bases  of 
their  architectural  remains  so  like  those  of  the  East, 
suggest  an  Asiatic  origin,  as  does  also  "  the  peculiar 
chronological  system  of  the  Aztecs,"  he  says,  "  their 
method  of  distributing  the  year  into  cycles  and 
reckoning  by  means  of  periodical  series  instead  of 
numbers.  A  similar  process  was  used  by  the  various 
Asiatic  nations  of  the  Mongol  family,  from  India  to 
Japan.  A  correspondence  quite  as  extraordinary  is 
found  between  the  hieroglyphics  used  by  the  Aztecs 
for  the  signs  of  the  days  and  those  zodiacal  signs 
which  the  Eastern  Asiatics  employed  as  one  of  the 
terms  of  their  series." 

Later  investigations  do  not  sustain  Prescott's  theory. 
"  At  whatever  point  we  touch  the  subject  of  ancient 
America,"  says  John  Fiske,  "  we  find  scientific  opinion 
tending  more  and  more  steadily  toward  the  conclusion 
that  its  people  and  their  culture  were  indigenous." 

Though  not  insensible  to  the  cruelties  necessarily 
attendant  upon  the  conquest  of  Mexico  nor  to  the 
mixture  of  refined  fanaticism  and  barbarity  in  these 
Spanish  soldiers  who  celebrated  the  mass  and  then 
marched  to  their  work  of  slaughter,  Prescott  finds  the 
conquest  justifiable  in  consideration  of  the  overthrow 
of  the  barbarous  and  cruel  religion  of  the  Aztecs,, 
which  required  the  annual  sacrifice  of  many  human 
beings.  He  admires  the  courage,  resolve,  skill,  and 
address  of  Cortes,  who  died  at  sixty-three,  in  debt, 


William  Hickling  Prescott  109 

embarrassed,  and  out  of  favor  with  the  court.  Speak 
ing  of  his  heroic  qualities,  his  constancy  of  purpose 
even  in  the  presence  of  defeat  and  ruin,  Prescott 
says :  "  When  his  own  men  deserted  him,  he  did  not 
desert  himself." 

It  is  this  element  of  heroism  in  Cortes  that  redeems 
the  conquest  of  Mexico.  There  is  nothing  like  it  in 
the  "  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Peru,"  which  follows 
the  same  plan  as  that  of  Mexico.  It  opens  with  a 
detailed  account  of  the  institutions  of  the  Incas  or 
nobility  of  ancient  Peru,  and  follows  this  description 
with  the  story  of  the  conquest  under  Pizarro.  The 
whole  story  of  this  conquest,  filled  as  it  is  with  cold 
blooded  butcheries  and  even  worse  atrocities,  and 
descriptions  of  the  greed,  cruelty,  and  perfidy  of 
these  low,  ignorant  Spanish  adventurers  (Pizarro  him 
self  could  not  even  read  or  write),  is  so  revolting  that 
the  reader  sickens  over  it,  and  feels  none  the  richer 
for  knowing  that  there  could  be  wretches  so  inhuman 
as  these  in  the  world.  Pizarro's  success  was  that  of 
good  fortune  backed  by  a  rapacious  cruelty  that 
knew  no  compunctions  of  conscience  or  dictates  of 
honor.  The  only  pleasing  and  valuable  part  of  the 
history  is  that  in  which  the  civilization  of  the  Peru 
vians  is  described. 

The  ancient  empire  of  Peru  stretched  along  the 
Pacific  coast  from  the  second  to  the  thirty-seventh 
degree,  and  spread  toward  the  east  considerably 
beyond  the  mountains.  But  it  was  for  the  most  part 
a  strip  of  sand  on  the  sea-coast  which  the  ingenuity 
of  the  Peruvians  had  rendered  fertile  by  irrigating 
canals  and  underground  watercourses.  The  ruins  on 
the  shores  of  Lake  Titicaca  belong  to  an  older  race 


no     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

than  the  Peruvians,  who  knew  nothing  of  their 
founders.  The  capital  of  the  Peruvian  empire  was 
Cuzco.  The  government  of  the  empire  was  a  singular 
union  of  communism  and  despotism ;  its  religion,  a 
worship  of  the  sun,  whose  sister  wife,  the  moon,  also 
received  religious  honors.  The  hereditary  nobility  of 
Peru,  the  royal  race  of  Incas,  boasted  themselves 
descendants  of  the  sun,  and  their  emperor,  represent 
ing  the  sun,  was  the  chief  of  the  priesthood.  All  the 
inhabitants  of  Peru  except  the  Incas  and  the  priest 
hood  worked  together  at  agriculture.  The  land  was 
parcelled  out  among  the  Incas,  the  people,  and  the 
sun,  —  the  land  of  the  latter  being  designed  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  priesthood.  Divisions  of  the  soil 
were  made  every  year,  and  increased  or  diminished 
for  the  people  according  to  the  size  of  the  family.  It 
was  a  crime  in  Peru  to  be  idle.  At  break  of  day  all 
the  inhabitants  upon  whom  the  lot  of  labor  fell,  were 
summoned  by  proclamation  to  their  work  in  the 
fields.  They  worked  first  on  the  land  of  the  sun, 
then  on  that  of  the  old,  sick,  or  infirm,  then  on  that 
of  the  Incas,  and  at  last  for  themselves.  The  Peruvian 
was  an  altruist  by  compulsion ;  he  labored  not  for 
himself,  but  for  others.  Says  Prescott:  — 

"However  industrious,  he  could  not  add  a  rood  to  his 
possessions,  nor  advance  himself  one  hair's  breadth  in  the 
social  scale.  The  great  and  universal  motive  to  honest 
industry,  that  of  bettering  one's  lot,  was  lost  upon  him.  The 
great  law  of  human  progress  was  not  for  him.  As  he  was 
born,  so  he  was  to  die.  Even  his  time  he  could  not  properly 
call  his  own.  Without  money,  with  little  property  of  any 
kind,  he  paid  his  taxes  in  labor.  .  .  .  The  Peruvian  laboring 
all  his  life  for  others  might  be  compared  to  the  convict  in  a 


William  Hickling  Prescott  1 1 1 

treadmill  going  the  same  dull  round  of  incessant  toil,  with 
the  consciousness  that  however  profitable  the  results  to  the 
state  they  were  nothing  to  him.  ...  No  man  could  be  rich, 
no  man  could  be  poor  in  Peru,  but  all  might  enjoy  and  did 
enjoy  a  competence.  .  .  .  No  Peruvian  was  too  low  for  the 
fostering  vigilance  of  government.  None  was  so  high  that 
he  was  not  made  to  feel  his  dependence  upon  it  in  every  act 
of  his  life.  His  very  existence  as  an  individual  was  absorbed 
in  that  of  the  community.  His  hopes  and  his  fears,  his  joys 
and  his  sorrows,  the  tenderest  sympathies  of  his  nature  which 
would  most  naturally  shrink  from  observation,  were  all  to  be 
regulated  by  law.  He  was  not  allowed  even  to  be  happy  in 
his  own  way.  The  government  of  the  Incas  was  the  mildest 
but  the  most  searching  of  despotisms.  ...  It  is  not  easy  to 
comprehend  the  genius  and  the  full  import  of  institutions  so 
opposite  to  those  of  our  own  free  republic,  where  every  man, 
however  humble  his  condition,  may  aspire  to  the  highest 
honors  of  the  state,  —  may  select  his  own  career,  and  carve 
out  his  fortune  in  his  own  way ;  where  the  light  of  knowledge 
instead  of  being  concentrated  on  a  chosen  few  is  shed 
abroad  like  the  light  of  day,  and  suffered  to  fall  equally  on 
the  poor  and  the  rich ;  where  the  collision  of  man  with  man 
wakens  a  generous  emulation  that  calls  out  latent  talent,  and 
tasks  the  energies  to  the  utmost ;  where  consciousness  of  in 
dependence  gives  a  feeling  of  self-reliance  unknown  to  the 
timid  subjects  of  a  despotism ;  where,  in  short,  the  govern 
ment  is  made  for  man,  —  not  as  in  Peru,  where  man  seemed 
to  be  made  only  for  the  government.  The  New  World  is 
the  theatre  on  which  these  two  political  systems,  so  opposite 
in  their  character,  have  been  carried  into  operation.  The 
empire  of  the  Incas  has  passed  away  and  left  no  trace.  The 
other  great  experiment  is  still  going  on,  —  the  experiment 
which  is  to  solve  the  problem  so  long  contested  in  the  Old 
World,  of  the  capacity  of  man  for  self-government.  Alas 
for  humanity  if  it  should  fail !  " 


H2     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

The  "  History  of  Philip  the  Second,"  the  last  and 
unfinished  work  of  Prescott,  is  well  written ;  but  the 
author's  propensity  to  forgive  the  enormities  of  his 
hero  on  the  score  that  they  are  to  be  referred  to  the 
influences  of  his  age,  forgetting  that  that  age  could 
also  produce  William  of  Orange,  mars  the  spirit  of 
the  book.  Writing  of  Philip  the  Second  to  Lady 
Lyell,  Prescott  says :  "  With  all  my  good  nature,  I 
can't  wash  him  even  into  the  darkest  French  gray. 
He  is  black  and  all  black."  The  reader  feels,  too,  that 
this  is  his  color ;  but  he  perceives  constant  efforts  at 
washing  in  Prescott's  history,  and  is  glad  to  know 
that  Philip's  character  has  been  painted  in  its  real 
hues  by  the  firmer,  more  masterly  hand  of  Motley. 


CHAPTER  VII 

TRANSCENDENTALISTS  AND  THE  TRANSCENDENTAL 
MOVEMENT  IN  NEW  ENGLAND 

T>  EFORE  proceeding  to  a  study  of  Emerson  it  is 
•U  necessary  to  give  some  attention  to  his  as 
sociates  and  to  the  time  in  which  he  lived,  for  Emer 
son  is  emphatically  a  man  of  his  time.  His  writings 
reflect  its  eager,  restless,  intellectual  curiosity ;  its 
separation  from  old  forms  of  thought;  its  irreverence 
for  the  past;  its  rash  and  arrogant  confidence  in  the 
future  ;  its  ideal  aspirations  and  vagaries  ;  its  attempt 
to  assimilate  the  new  and  startling  discoveries  of 
science,  and  its  newly  aroused  enthusiasm  for  Oriental 
philosophy.  It  was  a  time  of  intellectual  ferment;  a 
new  leaven  had  been  poured  into  the  old  materials  of 
thought,  and  the  minds  of  thinking  men  stirred  anew 
under  its  influence.  They  began  to  inquire  into  their 
spiritual  and  social  relations  as  they  had  not  done 
before.  In  New  England  this  spiritual  movement 
took  the  form  of  what  is  known  as  Transcendental 
ism.  The  best  explanation  of  this  term  is  to  be 
found  in  the  words  of  one  of  its  earliest  teachers, 
George  Ripley. 

GEORGE  RIPLEY  was  born  on  the  third  of  October, 
1802,  in  Greenfield,  Massachusetts.  He  was  educated 
at  Harvard,  taught  school  for  a  time,  prepared  for 
the  ministry,  and  in  1826  was  ordained  pastor  of  the 

8 


H4     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Unitarian  Society  of  Boston.     The  following  year  he 
married  Sophia  Willard  Dana. 

Ripley  was  a  serious,  reserved  man,  giving  little 
outward  token  of  an  idealistic  turn  of  mind  that  led 
him  later  into  extravagant  experiments  in  social  re 
form.  He  was  a  fine  scholar,  and  had  collected  an 
unusual  library,  particularly  rich  in  German  philos 
ophy.  He  was  one  of  the  founders  of  a  club  known 
as  the  Transcendental  Club,  which  assembled  for  the 
purpose  of  discussing  philosophical  questions  and 
such  as  bear  upon  the  conduct  of  life.  This  club  held 
its  first  meeting  at  his  house  on  the  nineteenth  of  Sep 
tember,  1836.  Emerson,  F.  H.  Hedge,  C.  Francis, 
James  Freeman  Clarke,  and  A.  B.  Alcott  were  all  that 
were  present,  besides  Ripley.  The  next  year  Caleb 
Stetson,  Theodore  Parker,  Margaret  Fuller,  and 
Elizabeth  Peabody  joined  the  club.  The  subjects  dis 
cussed  were  Law,  Truth,  Individuality,  and  the  Per 
sonality  of  God.  The  utmost  freedom  was  permitted 
in  these  discussions,  and  Ripley  found  in  them  an 
outlet  for  the  thoughts  growing  up  in  him,  but  so 
often  concealed  from  his  congregation  lest  he  should 
shock  them  by  uttering  what  might  be  construed 
as  heresy.  But  the  love  of  freedom  grows  with  its 
exercise,  and  in  a  few  years  the  longing  for  a  freer 
mode  of  worship  impelled  him  to  resign  his  pastorate. 
His  resignation  was  accepted  in  1841.  In  a  letter  to 
his  congregation  in  1840,  he  defines  Transcendentalism 
as  follows  :  — 

"  There  is  a  class  of  persons  who  desire  a  reform  in  the 
prevailing  philosophy  of  the  day.  These  are  called  Tran- 
scendentalists  because  they  believe  in  an  order  of  truths 
which  transcends  the  sphere  of  the  external  senses.  Their 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   115 

leading  idea  is  the  supremacy  of  mind  over  matter.  Hence 
they  maintain  that  the  truth  of  religion  does  not  depend  on 
tradition  nor  historical  facts,  but  has  an  unerring  witness  in 
the  soul.  There  is  a  light,  they  believe,  which  enlighteneth 
every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world ;  there  is  a  faculty  in 
all  —  the  most  degraded,  the  most  ignorant,  the  most  obscure 
—  to  perceive  spiritual  truth  when  distinctly  presented ;  and 
the  ultimate  appeal  on  all  moral  questions  is  not  a  jury  of 
scholars,  a  hierarchy  of  divines,  or  the  prescriptions  of  a 
creed,  but  to  the  common  sense  of  the  human  race.  These 
views  I  have  always  adopted ;  they  have  been  at  the  founda 
tion  of  my  preaching  from  the  first  time  that  I  entered  the 
pulpit  until  now.  The  experience  and  reflection  of  nearly 
twenty  years  have  done  much  to  confirm,  nothing  to  shake 
them  ;  and  if  my  discourses  in  this  house  or  my  lectures  in 
yonder  vestry  have  in  any  instance  displayed  the  vitality  of 
truth,  impressed  on  a  single  heart  a  genuine  sense  of  religion, 
disclosed  to  you  a  new  prospect  of  the  resources  of  your  own 
nature,  made  you  feel  more  deeply  your  responsibility  to 
God,  cheered  you  in  the  sublime  hope  of  immortality,  and 
convinced  your  reason  of  the  reality  and  worth  of  the  Chris 
tian  revelation,  it  was  because  my  mind  has  been  trained  in 
the  principles  of  Transcendental  philosophy,  — a  philosophy 
which  is  now  taught  in  every  university  on  the  continent  of 
Europe,  which  is  the  common  creed  of  the  most  enlightened 
nations,  and  the  singular  misunderstanding  of  which,  among 
ourselves,  illustrates  more  forcibly,  I  am  ashamed  to  say,  the 
heedless  enterprise  than  the  literary  culture  of  our  clergymen." 

Thus  Transcendentalism  found  one  of  its  most 
eager  American  expounders  in  George  Ripley,  under 
whose  influence  it  was  not  long  before  it  had  its 
literary  organ.  In  the  same  year,  1840,  in  which  he 
had  addressed  his  congregation  in  the  language 
quoted  above,  he  founded  "  The  Dial,"  in  conjunction 


1 1 6    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

with  Emerson  and  Margaret  Fuller.  "  The  Dial,"  a 
monthly  magazine  devoted  to  religion,  literature,  and 
art,  was  designed  to  do  in  public  what  the  Transcen 
dental  Club  had  done  in  private.  Emerson  sent  the 
first  number  of  "  The  Dial  "  to  Carlyle ;  and  the  sturdy 
Scotchman,  who  loved  a  fact  and  was  not  to  be  moved 
from  his  allegiance  to  it  by  the  prettiest  "  rose-pink 
dreams,"  replied,  in  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  it : 

"  I  read  it  with  interest :  it  is  an  utterance  of  what  is  pur 
est,  youngest  in  your  land,  —  pure,  ethereal  as  the  voices  of 
the  Morning  !  And  yet  —  you  know  me  —  for  me  it  is  too 
ethereal,  speculative,  theoretic  :  all  theory  becomes  more  and 
more  confessedly  inadequate,  untrue,  unsatisfactory,  almost  a 
mockery  to  me.  I  will  have  all  things  condense  themselves, 
take  shape  and  body  if  they  are  to  have  my  sympathy." 

The  general  public  was  like  Carlyle.  It  wanted 
more  body  in  its  spiritual  nutriment,  and  "  The  Dial," 
after  languishing  for  four  years,  quietly  died. 

Ripley's  next  venture  was  the  beautiful  but  un 
successful  socialistic  experiment  of  Brook  Farm. 
Before  giving  an  account  of  this  experiment,  it  is  well 
to  state  that  the  inquiry  into  man's  social  relations  at 
this  time  had  led  earnest  enthusiasts  into  as  many 
vagaries  as  the  investigation  of  his  spiritual  relations. 
The  outcome  of  this  inquiry  was  a  deep  and  wide 
spread  discontent  with  social  institutions,  and  a  firm 
belief  that  they  were  responsible  for  existent  poverty, 
degradation,  and  misery.  Nowhere  was  this  belief  so 
generally  and  so  fiercely  maintained  as  in  France, 
where  the  horrors  of  the  Revolution  might  have 
taught  men  that  governmental  restraints  are  still 
wholesome  and  necessary. 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   117 

The  founder  of  French  socialism  was  a  count 
named  ST.  SIMON,  who  at  the  age  of  nineteen 
assisted  the  American  colonies  in  their  revolt  against 
England.  He  took  no  part,  however,  in  the  French 
Revolution,  —  wanted,  perhaps,  a  revolution  of  his 
own  conducted  peacefully  by  which  the  law  of  inheri 
tance  should  be  abolished,  and  society  at  large  assume 
the  sole  management  of  all  commercial  enterprises 
and  public  improvements.  He  stringently  insisted 
upon  the  recognition  of  merit,  —  each  man's  retaining 
his  position  on  the  score  of  his  merit,  —  and  advo 
cated  the  complete  emancipation  of  woman.  He 
appealed  to  Louis  XVIII.  to  inaugurate  the  new 
order  of  things.  He  gave  his  valet  orders  to  awaken 
him  every  morning  with  the  words,  "  Monsieur  le 
Comte,  remember  that  you  have  great  things  to  do." 
But  no  great  things  came  of  all  his  restless  energy. 
He  completely  impoverished  himself,  found  few  fol 
lowers,  and  was  at  last  obliged  to  work  hard  at  an 
absurdly  low  salary  and  to  live  on  the  generosity  of 
a  former  valet. 

FOURIER  (1772-1837),  another  famous  socialist  of 
France,  was  the  son  of  a  rich  merchant.  He  believed 
in  the  free  development  of  human  nature,  the  free 
indulgence  of  all  desires  and  passions,  and  advocated 
co-operative  industry.  According  to  him,  society 
should  be  divided  into  communities  or  phalanges 
numbering  about  sixteen  hundred  persons,  all  of 
whom  should  live  in  one  common  building  or  phalan 
stery  and  have  a  certain  portion  of  ground  allotted 
to  them  for  cultivation.  Out  of  the  common  gain 
five-twelfths  should  be  given  to  labor,  four-twelfths  to 
capital,  and  three-twelfths  to  talent.  The  institution 


1 1 8     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

of  marriage  was  to  be  abolished.  Fourier's  theories 
on  the  relations  of  the  sexes  gave  great  offence  to 
society ;  but  his  theories  of  co-operation  soon  attracted 
widespread  attention,  not  only  in  France  but  in  other 
countries,  and  were  in  a  great  degree  the  inspiration 
of  Ripley's  attempt  in  America. 

PROUDHON,  a  third  notable  French  figure  in  this 
movement  of  dissatisfaction  with  society,  denounced 
the  systems  of  St.  Simon  and  Fourier.  He  was  the 
son  of  a  brewer's  cooper,  and  herded  cattle  in  his 
youth,  afterwards  becoming  a  printer  and  journalist. 
In  opinion,  he  was  an  anarchist,  and  asserted  that 
government  of  man  by  man  in  any  form  is  oppres 
sion.  He  thought  that  all  kinds  of  labor  should  be 
equally  paid ;  that  the  most  menial  service  should 
receive  the  same  reward  as  that  of  the  greatest  sculp 
tor,  poet,  artist,  claiming  that  a  day's  labor  balances 
a  day's  labor  whatever  its  nature. 

LASSALLE  (1825-1864)  was  the  originator  of  the 
social-democratic  movement  in  Germany,  and  founder 
of  the  association  known  as  the  United  Workmen  of 
Germany.  Lassalle  was  of  Jewish  extraction,  the  son 
of  a  prosperous  merchant.  He  was  a  violent  agitator, 
and  ambitious  of  overturning  the  German  Empire 
and  forming  a  Republic,  of  which  he  was  to  be  presi 
dent.  He  had  great  difficulty,  at  first,  in  arousing 
the  working-men  of  Germany  to  a  rebellious  attitude. 
He  wished  to  abolish  the  present  relations  of  capital 
and  labor  and  raise  the  working-men  into  a  great 
political  power.  In  private  life  he  was  a  great  dandy 
and  spendthrift,  living  sumptuously  and  giving  costly 
banquets.  He  was  killed  at  the  age  of  thirty-nine  in 
a  foolish  duel  over  a  woman. 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   119 

In  England  the  founder  of  socialism  was  ROBERT 
OWEN  (1771-1858).  He  was  born  at  Newton,  Mont 
gomeryshire,  North  Wales.  Owen's  father  was  a 
saddler  and  ironmonger.  So  thrifty  and  energetic 
was  young  Robert  that  at  nineteen  he  was  manag 
ing  a  cotton-mill  at  Manchester,  England.  During 
a  Glasgow  visit  he  fell  in  love  with  Miss  Dale, 
daughter  of  the  proprietor  of  New  Lanark  Mills. 
He  married  the  daughter,  bought  an  interest  in 
the  Lanark  mills,  and  finally  assumed  control  of 
them.  The  business  proved  a  great  commercial  suc 
cess.  His  improvements  in  the  condition  of  his 
workmen  resulted  in  a  community  where  drunkenness 
was  unknown,  and  health,  plenty,  and  contentment 
reigned. 

In  a  report  to  the  House  of  Commons  in  1817,  he 
recommended  the  establishment  of  communities  of 
about  one  hundred  and  twenty  persons,  who  should 
be  settled  on  land  comprising  from  one  thousand  to 
fifteen  hundred  acres,  and  that  they  should  all  live 
in  one  large  building  in  the  form  of  a  square,  with  a 
public  kitchen  and  dining-halls.  Work  and  the 
enjoyment  of  its  results  were  to  be  common.  In 
1825  an  experiment  of  this  kind  was  attempted  by 
Abram  Combe  at  Orbiston,  near  Glasgow;  and  Owen 
himself  commenced  another  in  America  at  New  Har 
mony,  Indiana,  where  most  of  his  wealth  was  sunk. 
Both  experiments  proved  complete  failures,  but  they 
brought  the  word  "  socialism  "  into  currency,  and  a 
vast  quantity  of  ephemeral  communistic  literature 
which  was  not  without  its  influence. 

From  the  preceding  account  of  the  growth  of 
socialistic  ideas,  Ripley's  experiment  at  Brook  Farm 


12  o    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

may  be  more  easily  understood.  It  is  of  especial 
interest  to  us  in  connection  with  the  literature  of  our 
country,  for  the  Brook  Farm  community  numbered 
among  its  first  members  our  foremost  writer  of  fiction 
and  greatest  imaginative  genius,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne, 
whose  experiences  there  suggested  to  him  "  The 
Blithedale  Romance." 

The  Brook  Farm  Association  for  Education  and 
Agriculture,  as  it  was  called,  was  founded  by  George 
Ripley  in. the  spring  of  1841.  The  association  bought 
a  tract  of  two  hundred  acres  of  farm  land  in  West 
Roxbury,  Massachusetts,  about  nine  miles  from 
Boston.  The  object  of  the  association  was  to  secure 
to  all  its  members,  with  perfect  social  equality,  the 
greatest  amount  of  culture  with  the  least  amount  of 
manual  labor,  or,  as  a  writer  in  "  The  Dial  "  expressed 
it,  "  This  community  aims  to  be  rich,  not  in  the 
metallic  representation  of  wealth,  but  in  the  wealth 
itself  which  money  should  represent,  namely,  leisure 
to  live  in  all  the  faculties  of  the  soul" 

The  plan  of  the  community  was  to  allow  sharehold 
ers  an  interest  of  five  per  cent  on  funds  invested  in 
the  common  property  of  the  farm.  The  members 
could  either  keep  house  or  board  in  common,  as  they 
chose.  Their  living  expenses  were  to  be  paid  from 
the  interest  accruing  to  them  or  from  the  wages  they 
received  for  their  labor  for  the  community.  The 
price  of  board,  including  fire,  light,  room,  and  wash 
ing,  was  four  dollars  a  week.  The  members  could 
work  at  what  they  liked  and  as  many  hours  as  they 
chose ;  but  whatever  the  nature  of  the  labor,  intellect 
ual  or  manual,  they  were  to  be  paid  the  same  rate  of 
wages,  on  the  ground  that  it  is  a  greater  sacrifice  to 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   121 

work  at  manual  than  at  intellectual  labor,  which  in  a 
great  measure  is  its  own  reward. 

Community  warehouses  were  to  supply  material 
comforts  at  the  cost  of  production,  and  in  course  of 
time  it  was  hoped  that  all  the  arts  and  all  the  trades 
would  flourish  in  harmonious  brotherhood  without 
the  stimulus  of  gain  or  competition,  —  that  life  would 
be  rendered  easy  to  all,  and  poverty  and  crime  become 
unknown. 

It  was  a  beautiful  dream,  and  the  dreamers  of  that 
first  community  were  noble  men  and  women.  Charles 
A.  Dana  was  recording  secretary,  and  Minot  Pratt, 
treasurer.  Ripley  placed  his  fine  library  at  the  ser 
vice  of  the  community ;  and  the  advantages  of  a 
superior  training  were  offered  to  pupils  not  only  in  its 
use,  but  in  the  association  with  so  many  men  and 
women  of  culture.  The  community  soon  became 
known  as  a  desirable  place  for  the  education  of  young 
people,  and  a  limited  number  of  pupils  was  received 
on  very  liberal  terms.  They  could  either  pay  their 
board  and  tuition  fees  by  money,  or  by  sharing  the 
labors  of  the  community.  It  is  possible  that  they 
may  have  missed  something  of  the  accuracy  and 
method  of  college  training ;  but  they  got  what  was 
better,  —  an  inspiration  to  a  simpler,  purer  life,  an 
uplifting  into  a  higher  atmosphere  of  intellect  and 
morals,  that  reacted  upon  them  in  the  most  beneficial 
way. 

The  community  soon  numbered  eighty  members  ; 
but  it  was  not  long  before  it  was  discovered  that  there 
are  certain  weaknesses  inherent  in  human  nature 
which  cannot  be  eradicated  by  phalansteries  or  life  in 
common,  even  in  surroundings  so  idyllic  as  those  of 


122    A  General  Survey  of  American*  Literature 

Brook  Farm.  Theory  and  practice  refused  to  be 
reconciled.  The  indolent  were  indolent  still,  and  the 
energetic  bore  the  heavy  end  of  the  burden  of  labor. 
Financial  difficulties  arose,  and  at  the  end  of  three 
years  the  community  was  increased  in  numbers  and 
transformed  into  a  Fourier  phalanx.  But  in  1846  the 
phalanstery,  or  building  in  which  the  members  were 
housed,  burned  down,  and  the  association  dissolved. 

The  failure  left  Ripley  poor,  and  burdened  by  a 
debt  which  hung  over  him  for  fifteen  years.  He 
Went  on  the  "  New  York  Tribune  "  at  a  salary  of  five 
dollars  a  week,  which  was  increased  from  time  to  time 
until  it  reached  the  sum  of  seventy-five  dollars  a 
week.  He  wrote  for  the  popular  magazines  of  the 
day,  and  in  association  with  C.  A.  Dana  edited  the 
"American  Encyclopaedia."  Ripley  died  in  1880. 
A  Lutheran  Orphans'  Home  now  occupies  the  site  of 
his  famous  experiment,  but  the  memory  of  it  is  one  of 
the  pleasant  and  wholesome  lessons  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  W.  H.  Channing,  nephew  of  W.  E.  Chan- 
ning,  the  great  Unitarian  leader,  said  of  it  in  1871 : 

"  We  tried  to  bloom  our  buds  while  the  snow  was  still  on 
the  ground  —  amidst  the  first  golden  streaks  of  sunrise.  So 
dear  Brook  Farm,  blossom  of  Eden  as  it  was,  paled,  grew 
brown,  fell  from  the  stalk,  and  left  as  if  in  mockery  a  pauper 
union  !  The  breath  of  its  fragrance  has  scented  the  atmos 
phere  of  our  whole  nation,  however.  But  the  process  of 
forcing  such  blossoms  is  too  wasteful.  The  fruit  cannot  set 
or  ripen  ;  and  that  fruit,  remember,  is  the  fruit  of  the  Tree  of 
Life.  We  do  injustice  to  our  faith  by  potting  a  small  speci 
men  twig  of  this  tree,  even  if  we  can  force  it  to  flower.  It 
was  an  heroic  effort  that  the  Brook  Farmer  made,  but  quite 
too  tragic  a  one  to  be  repeated." 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   123 

Transcendentalism  had  its  practical  expounder  in 
George  Ripley,  but  its  typical  philosopher  was  Amos 
Bronson  Alcott  (1799-1888),  its  typical  poet,  Jones 
Very  of  Salem,  Massachusetts,  and  its  finest  feminine 
type,  Margaret  Fuller. 

In  certain  particulars  Alcott  might  have  been  the 
prototype  of  Wordsworth's  hero  of  "  The  Excursion." 
Like  him,  Alcott  was  a  pedler  in  his  youth,  and,  like 
him,  he  was  given  to  philosophical  speculations. 
But  there  the  likeness  ends.  Alcott  gave  up  peddling 
and  tried  teaching  in  Boston.  He  was  master  of  a 
private  school  in  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  Masonic 
Temple. 

He  furnished  his  room  with  busts  of  Shakespeare, 
Milton,  Scott,  Socrates,  and  Plato,  —  an  unusual  pro 
ceeding  then,  but  common  enough  now.  He  adopted 
the  Socratic  method  of  teaching  by  questions  and 
conversations  on  various  subjects,  and  read  aloud  a 
great  deal  to  his  pupils,  requiring  the  most  earnest 
attention  from  them.  On  the  whole,  he  was  an  un 
commonly  fine  teacher  so  far  as  he  went.  But  he 
wholly  ignored  external  nature.  He  directed  the  eye 
inward,  not  outward  ;  he  made  the  child  think  about 
thoughts,  instead  of  helping  him  to  accumulate  the 
material  of  thought ;  and  carried  his  methods  of  self- 
analysis  so  far  as  to  insist  upon  autobiographical 
journal-writing  from  his  pupils,  and  in  this  way  over- 
stimulated  their  imagination  and  self-consciousness. 
His  school  at  first  numbered  about  twenty  pupils, 
boys  and  girls,  ranging  from  the  age  of  three  to 
twelve.  But  the  publication  of  a  little  book  entitled 
"  Conversations  on  the  Bible,"  the  result  of  his  class- 
work,  created  an  unfavorable  prejudice  against  him. 


124    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

His  pupils  were  withdrawn,  and  his  school-keeping 
ended. 

In  1842  Emerson,  who  had  an  extravagant  estima 
tion  of  Alcott's  ability,  contributed  to  a  fund  to  send 
him  to  England  to  commune  with  growing,  liberal 
minds  for  the  purpose  of  coming  at  some  definite 
plans  for  introducing  social  reforms  into  America. 
He  returned  in  October  of  the  same  year,  with  two 
English  socialists,  Charles  Lane  and  Henry  C.  Wright, 
and  undertook  at  once  the  disastrous  experiment  at 
Fruitlands  in  the  town  of  Harvard.  His  daughter 
Louisa,  whose  fame  as  a  writer  of  stones  for  children 
has  eclipsed  that  of  her  father,  has  given  us  in  her 
autobiography  a  half-humorous,  half-pathetic  account 
of  this  experiment,  in  a  chapter  entitled  "  Transcen 
dental  Wild  Oats." 

Emerson  had  given  Alcott  a  letter  of  introduction 
to  Carlyle,  and  the  keen-eyed  Scotchman  had  pierced 
at  a  glance  what  was  nebulous,  magnifying,  and 
mystifying,  and  got  at  once  to  the  small  nucleus  of 
him.  "  He  is  a  genial,  innocent,  simple-hearted  man," 
writes  Carlyle,  "  of  much  natural  intelligence  and 
goodness,  with  an  air  of  rusticity,  veracity,  and  dignity 
withal,  which  in  many  ways  appeals  to  one.  The 
good  Alcott  with  his  long,  lean  face  and  figure,  with 
his  gray,  worn  temples  and  mild  radiant  eyes;  all 
bent  on  saving  the  world  by  a  return  to  acorns  and 
the  golden  age ;  he  comes  before  me  like  a  venerable 
Don  Quixote,  whom  nobody  can  even  laugh  at  with 
out  loving."  But  later,  he  speaks  with  more  frank 
ness,  and  warns  Emerson  to  keep  "  rather  a  strict 
outlook  on  Alcott  and  his  English  tail.  I  mean  as 
far  as  we  have  any  business  with  it.  Bottomless 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   125 

imbeciles  ought  not  to  be  seen  in  company  with 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  who  has  already  men  listen 
ing  to  him  on  this  side  of  the  water." 

Alcott  had  proposed  to  some  English  men  of  let 
ters  a  new  international  journal  to  be  called  "  The 
Janus :  An  Ephemeris  of  the  Permanent  in  Religion, 
Philosophy,  Science,  Art,  and  Letters."  Neither  the 
proposal  nor  the  title  receiving  the  approval  he  ex 
pected,  Alcott  remarks :  "  My  idea  was  obviously 
too  broad  and  daring  for  them,  and  so  we  separated." 
The  tone  of  this  consolatory  reflection  is  character 
istic  of  the  Transcendentalists.  They  never  explained 
their  failures  to  interest  and  arouse  the  public  by 
their  own  vagueness  and  want  of  common  sense. 
They  explained  it  as  the  result  of  the  public's  ob- 
tuseness,  cowardly  conventionalism,  and  lack  of 
spirituality. 

Alcott  continued  for  some  time  to  sow  "  Tran 
scendental  wild  oats  "  in  lectures  that  did  not  pay 
expenses,  and  which  he  persisted  in  calling  conver 
sations,  and  finally,  in  the  spring  of  1879,  he  founded 
the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy.  This  school 
afforded  him  an  opportunity  to  exercise  his  partic 
ular  gift  of  conversation,  in  which  gift  he  took  so 
much  delight  as  to  declare  that  his  definition  of 
heaven  was  "  a  place  where  you  can  have  a  little 
conversation." 

Among  the  notable  men  who  assisted  in  the  first 
session,  which  lasted  six  weeks,  Emerson  was  the 
most  distinguished.  Lectures  were  delivered  on  art, 
psychology,  the  Platonic  philosophy ;  and  such  sub 
jects  as  the  personality  of  God,  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  pre-existence,  fate,  and  freedom  of  the  will, 
were  freely  discussed. 


126     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

In  the  second  year's  program  Alcott  discussed 
mysticism,  St.  John  the  Evangelist,  Behmen, 
Swedenborg.  Other  lecturers  expounded  specula 
tive  philosophy,  Oriental  and  mystical  philosophy. 
The  philosophies  of  Hegel,  Fichte,  and  Kant  were 
the  chief  topics  of  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  years. 
The  sixth  year,  the  genius  and  character  of  Emerson 
was  the  principal  subject  of  discussion ;  and  Goethe 
and  modern  science  furnished  the  theme  for  the 
seventh  year. 

It  will  be  seen  by  this  list  of  subjects  that  it  was 
chiefly  with  the  unknowable,  not  the  knowable,  that 
the  Transcendentalists  were  concerned,  and  that  in 
this  respect  they  showed  a  spirit  directly  contrary 
to  that  of  patient  scientific  research,  with  its  humble 
consciousness  of  the  limitations  of  human  knowledge. 
They  closed  their  eyes  to  the  phenomena  without 
them,  and  gave  themselves  up  to  idle  speculations. 
The  Transcendentalists  were  ambitious  of  "  stringing 
worlds  like  beads  upon  their  thought,"  but  nothing 
more  than  a  glittering  necklace  came  of  this  pretty 
pastime.  Infected  with  the  teachings  of  Oriental 
philosophy,  they  regarded  the  soul  of  man  as  a  pre- 
existent,  external  part  of  the  divine  soul  of  the 
universe.  In  this  arrogant  belief  they  fell  into  a 
mild  kind  of  intellectual  anarchy,  in  which  every 
mind  by  virtue  of  its  own  right  divine  was  privileged 
to  claim  an  incontestable  authority  for  its  wildest 
opinions.  This  belief,  to  be  sure,  gave  to  the 
holder  a  certain  dignity  and  self-reliance  that  was  not 
without  its  positive  value,  and  it  must  be  acknowl 
edged  that  the  Transcendentalists  cannot  be  charged 
with  any  mean  or  trivial  interpretation  of  life.  On 
the  contrary,  they  gave  to  it  a  nobly  spiritual  sig- 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   127 

nificance.  They  stripped  it  of  its  vulgar  material 
wrappings,  its  greed  of  gain,  its  hurry  and  fever  of 
ignoble  strife.  They  broke  the  old  Puritan  fetters  of 
thought,  and  gave  the  mind  liberty  to  go  whither 
it  would,  and  they  gave  to  the  world  two  men  of  in 
contestable  power,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and  Henry 
David  Thoreau. 

JONES  VERY,  the  typical  poet  of  Transcendental 
ism,  was  born  at  Salem,  Massachusetts,  August 
twenty-eighth,  1813.  His  father,  a  sea-captain,  mar 
ried  his  own  cousin  Lydia  Very,  and  died  when  his 
son  was  eleven  years  old.  At  fourteen  young  Very 
became  an  errand-boy  for  an  auction-room  at  Salem, 
reading  greedily  all  books  that  passed  through  his 
employer's  hands.  He  fitted  himself  for  a  tutorship 
in  a  private  Latin  school  in  Salem,  and  in  1834  en 
tered  the  Sophomore  class  at  Harvard.  He  was 
graduated  two  years  later,  and  received  an  appoint 
ment  as  tutor  in  Greek  at  the  Divinity  School,  where 
he  was  studying  theology.  An  overweening  vanity 
and  persuasion  of  his  own  purity  made  him  lose  all 
sense  of  relation  and  proportion.  He  said  that  he 
felt  it  an  honor  to  wash  his  own  face,  because  it  was 
the  temple  of  the  spirit.  But  he  saw  only  vileness 
in  the  world  and  in  those  about  him.  He  told  Emer 
son  one  day  that  it  was  a  day  of  hate  with  him,  —  a 
day  when  the  bad  element  in  every  person  repelled 
him  and  he  shrank  from  giving  his  hand  to  those 
whom  he  met;  that  the  world  looked  to  him  like  a 
huge  ink-blot,  and  he  only  went  to  see  men  to  do 
them  good. 

This  morbid  frame  of  mind  soon  became  so  alarm 
ing  that  he  was  put  for  a  time  in  an  insane  asylum 


128     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

at  Somerville,  a  suburb  of  Boston.  After  a  few 
months'  detention  he  was  released,  and  in  1843,  when 
his  health  was  sufficiently  restored,  he  received  a 
license  to  preach.  He  was  never  a  popular  preacher 
and  received  no  regular  pastorate,  but  occasionally 
supplied  a  Unitarian  pulpit.  He  never  married,  but 
after  the  death  of  his  mother  lived  quietly  in  the 
family  home  with  his  sisters.  His  mornings  were 
spent  in  study,  and  his  afternoons  in  rambling  alone 
over  the  fields  and  hills.  His  love  of  nature,  he  says, 

"  is  deeper  far 
Than  strength  of  words,  though  spirit-born,  can  tell ;" 

and  he  certainly  gives  no  expression  to  that  keen 
delight  in  natural  beauty  that  speaks  so  unmistakably 
in  Cowper,  Wordsworth,  and  certain  of  Burns's  poems. 
His  love  for  nature  never  rises  above  a  comfortable 
sensation  of  being  undisturbed  in  his  self-commun- 
ings.  This  drowsy  comfort  is  expressed  in  the  fol 
lowing  poem,  "  The  Columbine,"  which,  as  well  as 
any  that  might  be  selected,  gives  the  range  of  the 
poet's  mind  in  this  direction :  — 

"  Still,  still  my  eyes  will  gaze  long  fixed  on  thee, 

Till  I  forget  that  I  am  called  a  man, 
And  at  thy  side  fast-rooted  seem  to  be, 

And  the  breeze  comes  my  cheek  with  thine  to  fan. 
Upon  this  craggy  hill  my  life  shall  pass, 

A  life  of  summer  days  and  summer  joys, 
Nodding  our  honey  bells  mid  pliant  grass, 

In  which  the  bee  half  hid  his  time  employs; 
And  here  we  '11  drink  with  thirsty  pores  the  rain, 

And  turn  dew-sprinkled  to  the  rising  sun, 
And  look  when  in  the  naming  west  again 

His  orb  across  the  heavens  its  path  has  run : 
Here  left  in  darkness  on  the  rocky  steep, 
My  weary  eyes  shall  close,  like  folding  flowers,  in  sleep." 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   129 

With  the  exception  of  the  religious  sonnets  and 
hymns,  the  subjects  of  Very's  poems  are  mostly 
natural  objects  met  in  his  rambles,  notably  flowers 
and  trees;  as  "  The  Yellow  Violet,"  "The  Hous- 
tonia,"  "The  Oak  and  the  Poplar,"  "The  May 
Flower,"  "  The  Wind  Flower,"  "  The  Sabbatia,"  etc. 

Jones  Very  thought  himself  a  reed  through  which 
the  Master  Musician  spoke.  The  monotonous  bur 
den  of  his  rhymes  is,  "  I  am  the  Lord's :  He  speaks 
through  me ;  I  am  but  a  passive  instrument  of  His 
will."  But  never  was  there  more  foolish  overrating 
of  a  humble  power  of  rhyming.  He  has  not  written 
a  quotable  line,  unless  it  be  the  opening  lines  of  the 
sonnet  entitled  "  The  True  Light,"  which  are  a  pretty 
rhetorical  rendering  of  the  familiar  thought  that  the 
kingdom  of  God  is  within  you  :  — 

"  The  morning's  brightness  cannot  make  thee  glad, 

If  thou  art  not  more  bright  than  it  within, 
And  naught  of  evening's  peace  hast  thou  e'er  had, 
If  evening  first  did  not  with  thee  begin." 

Once  only  did  he  break  through  the  monotonous 
circle  of  ideas  to  which  he  gave  expression,  and  write 
true  poetry,  and  that  was  when  he  wrote  "  The  Arab 
Steed."  Perhaps  for  this  one  poem  he  deserves 
grateful  remembrance.  There  is  in  it  a  fire,  a  swift 
energy,  an  imaginative  vigor  of  which  he  gives  no 
proof  elsewhere.  His  weakness  is  the  weakness  of 
the  monotone,  —  the  weakness  of  the  man  in  whom 
is  lacking  that  fine  common-sense  born  of  experience, 
and  who  has  nothing,  therefore,  to  hold  him  back 
from  yielding  to  the  extreme  conclusions  of  his 
theories.  His  love  of  God  crowded  from  his  heart 
the  love  of  man.  He  was  pure ;  but  his  purity  was 

9 


i  jo    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

that  of  white,  dry  sand  in  which  not  even  a  nettle 
will  grow ;  and  so  "  our  brave  saint,"  as  Emerson  calls 
him,  has  done  less  for  the  world  than  many  a  sinner 
with  the  gift  of  song.  He  died  on  the  eighth  of 
May,  1880.  In  manner,  he  was  reserved  yet  cour 
teous;  in  person,  tall,  straight,  and  haggard  in  his 
leanness.  His  portrait  represents  a  long,  thin  face, 
the  cheeks  drawn  in  and  covered  on  the  lower  part 
with  a  scant  fringe  of  hair,  the  mouth  pursed  up,  the 
eyes  sunken  and  dreamy,  the  forehead  bald,  the  top- 
head  high  and  pointed  arched.  It  is  the  face  of  one 
to  whom  the  world  is  but  a  place  of  unwilling  sojourn, 
the  face  of  one  who  would  be  solitary  in  crowded 
places,  and  in  whose  heart  there  is  an  unstilled  hunger 
for  the  unknown. 

Jones  Very  represents  wholly  the  dreamy  poetic 
side  of  Transcendentalism  with  its  coloring  of  relig 
ious  mysticism.  Alcott  is  its  theorizing  philosopher, 
with  his  head  in  the  clouds  and  his  feet  in  the  mire. 
George  Ripley  is  its  benevolent  man  of  action,  at 
tempting  to  put  into  practice  its  theories,  and  learn 
ing  through  disastrous  experience  that  man  has 
matter  as  well  as  spirit  to  contend  with  in  this  world. 
But  in  no  one  has  Transcendentalism  so  complete  a 
representative  as  in  that  brilliant,  restless,  romantic, 
daring,  arrogant  spirit  known  as  Margaret  Fuller. 
Quick  to  feel  and  quick  to  think,  she  brought  to  her 
intercourse  with  men  of  genius  that  subtle  sympathy 
which  is  the  sunshine  and  dew  of  the  spirit,  brighten 
ing  and  vivifying  all  who  come  under  its  influence, 
and  she  will  live  to  posterity  in  their  generous  and 
grateful  eulogies  rather  than  in  the  value  of  any 
thing  she  has  written.  She  will  live  as  the  repre- 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   131 

sentative  of  Transcendentalism  in  all  its  varied 
aspects,  —  in  its  poetry  of  boundless  aspiration  and 
theoretic  activity,  in  its  prose  of  humble  achievement, 
and  in  its  stimulating  influence.  She  was  the  richest 
fruit  it  produced  in  New  England. 

SARAH  MARGARET  FULLER  OSSOLI  was  born  at 
Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  on  the  twenty-third  of 
May,  1 8 10.  Her  father,  Timothy  Fuller,  a  lawyer 
and  politician  of  some  prominence,  was  noted  among 
his  associates  for  a  certain  irritating  arrogance,  which 
trait  he  bequeathed  in  no  less  degree  to  his  gifted 
daughter.  T.  W.  Higginson  says  that  had  the  father 
"  lived  next  door  to  an  imperial  palace,  he  would 
have  thought  that  it  was  he  who  did  the  favor  by 
mingling  with  his  neighbors."  This  inherited  pride 
and  unwarrantable  self-assertion  were  curiously  pres 
ent  in  Margaret  in  a  belief  cherished  in  her  childhood 
that  she  was  not  the  real  daughter  of  her  parents,  but 
a  changeling  European  princess.  Father  and  daughter 
were  too  much  alike  to  be  congenial ;  neither  would 
bend  to  the  mood  of  the  other,  and  as  the  father 
undertook  the  charge  of  his  daughter's  early  educa 
tion,  there  often  resulted  an  unhappy  conflict  of  wills 
that  made  them  both  wretched. 

She  began  studying  Latin  at  six,  Greek  some 
what  later,  and  her  father  listened  to  her  recitations 
when  his  office  hours  were  over.  The  natural  result 
of  this  undue  stimulation  of  an  intellect  originally 
precocious  and  associated  with  an  ardent,  excitable 
temperament,  was  a  deplorable  state  of  the  nerves,  in 
which  horrible  nightly  visions  drove  sleep  from  her 
pillow  or  made  a  somnambulist  of  her.  As  she  grew 
older,  her  ill-health  was  further  aggravated  by  the 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

unwise  mode  of  dressing  then  prevalent,  and  by 
the  fact  that  she  was  allowed  to  go  into  society  at 
thirteen.  Naturally,  at  seventeen,  we  find  her  writ 
ing  verses  lamenting  the  vanishing  of  "  life's  primal 
freshness  all  too  soon,"  and  invoking  the  "  breath  of 
dawn  to  rouse  to  the  draught  of  life  the  wearied 
sense."  The  story  of  her  childhood  and  girlhood  is 
not  a  pleasing  one.  The  grave  defects  of  her  pas 
sionate  and  imperious  nature  were  not  softened  or 
concealed  by  any  womanly  graces,  W.  H.  Channing, 
who  became  in  her  later  womanhood  her  ardent 
friend,  and  praised  her  heroism,  her  devotion  to  truth, 
and  the  quickening  power  of  her  keen  intellect,  speaks 
of  her  repellent  qualities  in  her  twentieth  year,  —  her 
exaggerated  intensity,  arrogance,  satire,  and  her 
romantic  friendships  in  which  "  she  seemed  to  walk 
enveloped  in  a  shining  fog  of  sentimentalism."  "In 
brief,"  he  adds,  "  it  must  be  candidly  confessed  that 
I  then  suspected  her  of  affecting  the  part  of  a  Yankee 
Corinne." 

As  her  reading  at  this  time  was  chiefly  in  French 
and  Italian,  and  as  her  exorbitant  vanity  craved 
nothing  so  much  as  admiration,  Channing' s  suspicions 
are  probably  well  founded.  Extremely  plain  in  per 
son,  she  craved  the  gift  of  beauty  for  the  power  that 
lies  in  it.  But  she  very  early  learned  that  a  higher 
and  rarer  power  might  be  hers,  —  the  power  of  intel 
lectual  vigor.  It  would  be  difficult  to  prove  that  her 
love  of  learning  at  this  time  was  not  rooted  in  a  long 
ing  to  be  admired.  With  all  her  passionate  admira 
tion  of  genius  and  her  belief  that  she  had  its  power, 
it  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  her  that  the  very 
soul  of  genius  is  a  boundless  tenderness  that  overruns 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   133 

humanity  and  spends  itself,  as  it  spent  itself  in  Burns, 
even  on  the  daisy  at  one's  feet  or  on  the  cowering 
mouse  of  the  field.  She  seems  never  to  have  known 
that  its  other  characteristic  is  a  sweet  humility,  not 
weak  or  fawning,  but  strong  and  simple,  the  result 
of  that  clear  insight  into  the  relation  of  one  man  to 
the  vast  unknown  about  him.  But  this  was  not 
then,  nor  was  it  ever,  Margaret  Fuller's  ideal  of 
genius. 

It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  this  fact,  for  it  lies  at 
the  bottom  of  her  failure  as  a  critic  and  writer.  She 
had  formed  herself  after  the  model  of  the  French 
sentimentalists,  and  like  them  she  never  associated 
strength  with  serenity.  Her  idea  of  intellectual 
activity  was  never  disassociated  from  that  of  a  de 
lirious  intoxication  of  the  senses.  She  loved  to  be 
excited.  She  did  not  think  she  lived  when  her  pulse 
beat  normally,  but  only  when  it  ran  at  fever  rate. 
The  heat  of  blood  which  belongs  to  youth  and  passes 
with  it  was  the  inspiration  of  Margaret  Fuller's  talent, 
and  nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  that  with  in 
creasing  years  her  gifts  would  not  have  ripened  but 
would  have  shrivelled. 

The  removal  of  the  Fuller  family  from  Cambridge 
to  Groton  in  1833,  and  the  death  of  her  father  two 
years  later,  were  turning-points  in  Margaret's  life. 
The  beautiful,  fearless  courage  in  her  awoke  to  the 
responsibilities  of  her  situation,  and  she  became  the 
heart  and  stay  of  the  home.  In  1837  sne  taught  for 
a  few  months  in  A.  B.  Alcott's  school  in  Boston,  and 
then  received  an  appointment  in  the  Green  Street 
Academy  of  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  at  a  salary  of 
one  thousand  dollars  a  year.  She  disliked  teaching, 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

and  in  December,  1838,  she  left  Providence  for  Boston, 
hoping  to  find  a  fuller  field  of  activity  for  her  re 
markable  gifts.  For  a  time  she  took  private  pupils  in 
Boston  at  two  dollars  an  hour,  and  then  started  her 
famous  conversation  classes.  The  first  class,  consisting 
of  twenty-five  ladies,  met  on  the  sixteenth  of  Novem 
ber,  1839,  at  Miss  Peabody's  rooms  on  West  Street. 
The  class  met  once  a  week  at  noon,  and  remained  to 
gether  for  two  hours.  The  first  series  of  conversa 
tions  lasted  for  thirteen  weeks,  and  the  subject  was 
Grecian  mythology.  The  ladies  took  part  in  the 
discussion  by  questions  and  answers,  but  the  burden 
of  the  labor  naturally  fell  to  the  shoulders  that  could 
carry  them  best,  and  those  were  Margaret's.  The  topic 
of  the  next  year's  series  of  thirteen  weeks  was  the 
Fine  Arts.  These  classes  were  so  successful  that  they 
were  continued  each  winter  until  Margaret's  removal 
to  New  York  in  1844.  "  What  is  life?"  "Culture," 
"  Ignorance,"  "  Vanity,"  Prudence,"  were  other  sub 
jects  of  discussion. 

In  1839  Margaret  published  a  translation  of 
"Eckermann's  Conversations  with  Goethe,"  and  in 
1840  she  undertook  for  two  years  the  editorship  of 
the  new  Transcendental  organ,  "  The  Dial."  Among 
other  things,  she  wrote  for  its  pages  the  series  of 
articles  called  "  The  Great  Lawsuit,"  afterward  pub 
lished  in  book  form  under  the  title  of  "  Woman  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century."  "  Summer  on  the  Lakes,"  her 
first  original  publication  in  book  form,  appeared  in 
1844;  it  brought  her  no  pecuniary  recompense,  but 
it  added  to  her  growing  reputation,  and  in  December 
of  the  same  year  Horace  Greeley  offered  her  the 
position  of  literary  critic  on  the  "  New  York  Tribune." 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   135 

She  at  once  went  to  New  York,  and  became  an  inmate 
of  the  Greeley  household. 

She  was  not  a  ready  writer,  but  dependent  upon 
moods  and  inspirations,  and  the  punctual  demands  of 
newspaper  work  taxed  her  severely.  She  was  glad  to 
escape  them  and  realize  a  long-cherished  wish  when, 
in  the  summer  of  1846,  she  set  sail  for  England.  She 
visited  Carlyle  and  Wordsworth,  and  met  DeQuincey. 
She  made  a  tour  of  Scotland,  and  then  went  to  Paris, 
where  she  visited  George  Sand.  From  France  she 
journeyed  to  Italy,  and  settled  in  Rome,  where  the 
romance  and  the  tragedy  of  her  life  began. 

Italy  at  this  time  was  still  engaged  in  her  long 
struggle  to  become  a  united  kingdom,  and  at  the  time 
of  Margaret  Fuller's  arrival  three  parties  were  or 
ganized  whose  object  was  national  unity.  One  party, 
known  as  Young  Italy  and  led  by  Joseph  Mazzini, 
desired  a  republic;  another  party  desired  a  con 
federation  of  states  with  the  Pope  at  its  head ;  the 
third  party  wished  a  constitutional  monarchy  with  the 
King  of  Sardinia  on  the  throne.  The  last  party, 
through  the  efforts  of  Count  Cavour,  was  destined  to 
see  its  wishes  fulfilled,  and  to  give  to  Italy  the  peace 
of  unity. 

Margaret  Fuller  threw  herself  ardently  into  the 
cause  of  young  Italy;  she  became  the  friend  and 
counsellor  of  Mazzini,  and  in  December,  1847,  sne 
secretly  married  a  young  Italian  patriot,  Marquis 
Ossoli.  This  young  man,  who  was  some  eight  or 
nine  years  her  junior,  was  of  very  handsome  person, 
tall,  dark -haired,  dark-eyed,  and  gentle-mannered,  but 
intellectually  far  beneath  her.  But  the  hungry- 
hearted  woman,  once  so  scornful  of  an  intelligence 


136     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

beneath  her  own,  had  learned  the  worth  of  heart  as 
well  as  head.  The  secret  of  her  marriage  was  care 
fully  kept  even  from  her  American  relatives  and 
friends  until  some  time  after  the  birth  of  her  child, 
which  took  place  in  September,  1848,  at  Rieti,  a  clas 
sical  old  town  of  Italy.  The  reason  given  for  the 
concealment  was  that  the  announcement  of  the  mar 
riage  of  the  young  Marquis  to  a  Protestant  and  a 
Republican  would  endanger  such  hopes  of  favor  as 
his  family  and  social  relations  might  offer  him  in  case 
of  the  failure  of  the  Republican  party. 

During  the  siege  of  Rome  by  the  French  in  1848, 
Margaret  left  her  infant  at  Rieti  with  an  Italian  nurse, 
and  hurried  on  to  Rome  to  offer  her  services  in  the 
care  of  the  wounded  and  dying  at  the  soldiers'  hos 
pitals.  A  brief  respite  of  peace  and  happiness  with 
her  husband  and  child  in  Florence  followed  the 
terrors  and  anxieties  of  her  life  in  Rome.  But  her 
money  was  nearly  spent,  the  necessity  for  further  ex 
ertion  pressed  upon  her,  and  she  determined  to  return 
to  America.  She  sailed  with  her  husband  and  child 
Angelo,  from  Leghorn  on  the  ship  "  Elizabeth  "  in  May, 
1850.  The  pathetic  story  of  that  voyage  homeward 
bound ;  the  death  of  the  captain  by  small-pox ;  the 
anxious  watch  over  the  little  Angelo  stricken  with 
the  same  dread  disease;  the  child's  recovery;  the 
violent  tempest  in  sight  of  land,  and  the  wrecking  of 
the  vessel  on  Fire  Island  beach,  —  all  this  has  been 
graphically  told  by  the  few  survivors  of  that  wreck. 
But  Margaret  Fuller  and  her  loved  ones  were  not 
among  them.  The  child's  body  was  washed  ashore 
and  was  buried  in  Mt.  Auburn  Cemetery,  Cam 
bridge,  at  the  foot  of  a  stone  erected  to  the 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   137 

memory  of  Margaret  Fuller,  her  husband,  and  her 
child. 

Never  was  woman  more  fortunate  in  her  friend 
ships  than  Margaret  Fuller.  She  knew  intimately 
most  of  the  best  men  and  women  of  New  England. 
Theodore  Parker,  W.  H.  Channing,  George  Ripley 
and  his  wife,  James  Freeman  Clarke,  Dr.  Hedge, 
Alcott,  Thoreau,  Hawthorne,  and  Emerson  were  her 
friends,  and  all  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  admired 
her.  To  have  had  the  power  to  form  and  keep  such 
friendships  argues  no  slender  fibre  of  actual  worth 
in  the  woman  ;  but  when  we  turn  from  the  story  of 
her  life  of  struggle  and  aspiration,  and  the  friendly 
eulogies  of  her  genius  by  those  who  knew  her,  it  is 
impossible  to  escape  a  feeling  of  intense  disappoint 
ment.  The  best  of  her  critical  articles  collected  from 
the  columns  of  the  "  New  York  Tribune  "  are  to  be 
found  in  a  volume  entitled  "  Art,  Literature,  and  the 
Drama."  "  Life  Within  and  Life  Without "  is  the  title 
of  another  volume  prepared  from  the  unpublished 
manuscripts  which  she  left  at  her  death,  while  the 
record  of  her  travels  is  to  be  found  in  a  book  called 
"  At  Home  and  Abroad."  These  volumes,  together 
with  "  Summer  on  the  Lakes"  and  "  Woman  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century,"  are  sufficient,  if  the  quality  were 
equal  to  the  quantity,  to  have  established  her  fame 
on  a  solid  basis.  But  there  is  infinitely  more  whey 
than  curd  in  her  books.  Her  talent  has  been  called 
critical,  not  creative,  and  as  such  has  been  highly 
praised ;  but  the  true  test  of  a  critic's  power  is  time. 
It  is  easy  enough  to  pronounce  judgment  according 
to  one's  individual  tastes  ;  but  to  pronounce  it  accord 
ing  to  a  fixed  standard,  established  upon  a  knowl- 


138     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

edge  of  human  nature  and  a  close  familiarity  with  the 
masterpieces  of  human  art  in  all  ages  and  countries, 
is  so  difficult  that  the  literature  which  can  boast  its 
two  or  three  fine  critics  to  its  scores  of  creative 
geniuses,  may  be  considered  rich  in  criticism. 

Margaret  Fuller's  standard  was  false.  It  was  not 
the  natural  but  the  unnatural  that  appealed  to  her. 
She  had  a  decided  bias  toward  the  romantic,  the 
exaggerated,  and  the  eccentric.  By  nature  super 
stitious,  a  believer  in  charms,  fated  days,  talismans, 
presentiments,  she  ignored  real  science,  but  gave  a 
ready  acquiescence  to  the  preposterous  claims  of 
"mesmerism  and  its  goblin  brood."  "Subject,"  she 
says  of  herself,  "  to  the  sudden  revelations,  the  breaks 
in  habitual  existence,  caused  by  the  aspect  of  death, 
the  touch  of  love,  the  flood  of  music,  I  never  lived,  that 
I  remember,  what  you  call  a  common  natural  day. 
All  my  days  are  touched  by  the  supernatural,  for  I 
feel  the  pressure  of  hidden  causes  and  the  presence, 
sometimes  the  communion,  of  unseen  powers."  Now, 
it  is  by  the  pure  light  of  a  common  day  that  the  true 
critic  views  his  subject.  The  light  by  which  Mar 
garet  Fuller  viewed  objects  was  broken  by  prismatic 
coloring;  she  saw  by  red,  blue,  yellow,  or  violet  rays, 
therefore  her  criticisms  simply  voice  an  idiosyncrasy. 
They  have  no  value  in  themselves  aside  from  that 
which  belongs  to  a  unique  and  interesting  personality. 
Time  has  in  almost  every  case  refuted  them,  and  all 
her  predictions  fail.  She  thought,  for  example,  that 
the  novels  of  Charles  Brockden  Browne  should  be 
the  pride  of  his  countrymen.  She  hailed  Henry 
Taylor,  by  virtue  of  his  now  almost  forgotten  "  Philip 
Van  Artevelde,"  as  a  bright  poetic  star  of  the  first 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   139 

magnitude.  Of  Bailey,  the  author  of  "  Festus,"  she 
speaks  in  terms  of  extravagant  praise,  finding  no  poet 
of  his  day  worthy  to  stand  beside  him.  But  while 
she  was  thus  hailing  meteors  for  stars,  there  was 
shining  in  England  a  clear  steady  light  destined  to 
shine  on  through  the  ages.  The  new  star  was  Words 
worth,  but  she  did  not  recognize  him.  Longfellow 
she  thought  artificial  and  inartistic,  and  Lowell "  abso 
lutely  wanting  in  the  true  spirit  and  tone  of  poesy," 
and  predicted  that  posterity  would  not  remember  him. 
On  the  other  hand,  of  Ellery  Channing,  her  brother- 
in-law,  whom  posterity  has  not  remembered,  she  said 
that  "  some  of  the  purest  tones  of  the  lyre  are  his,  the 
finest  inspirations  as  to  the  feelings  and  passions  of 
men."  Of  Goethe,  whom  she  was  said  to  understand 
better  than  any  one  in  America,  she  has  left  no 
memorable  word.  She  had  no  adequate  conception 
of  either  Carlyle  or  Emerson,  while  of  Disraeli,  the 
most  factitious  of  writers,  she  said  that  he  "  shows 
not  only  the  heart  but  the  soul  of  men ;  he  wishes  to 
care  wisely  for  all."  Her  best  critique,  that  on  Sir 
James  Mackintosh,  owes  what  merit  it  has  to  the 
truthfulness  of  an  undercurrent  of  self-analysis,  made 
possible  and  proper  by  a  partial  likeness  between  her 
self  and  her  subject.  Like  Mackintosh,  she  eagerly 
desired  literary  distinction,  and  found  in  conversation 
an  outlet  for  her  intellectual  activity.  She  speaks, 
therefore,  with  rare  penetration  of  the  charms  of 
conversation,  and  of  the  tact  and  ability  that  it 
requires. 

The  romantic  cast  of  her  imagination,  which  is 
her  weakness  as  a  critic,  gives  to  her  descriptive 
writing  a  feeble  Chateaubriandish  coloring  that  robs 


140    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

it  of  fidelity  and  originality.  Had  she  been  capable 
of  reproducing  simplicity  and  truth,  and  shunned  the 
"  bombast  spates  o'  nonsense  swell,  and  snap  con 
ceits,'1  she  would  have  needed  no  memorial  cairn  to 
preserve  some  record  of  a  life  so  full  of  ambition. 
Her  books  would  have  been  what  they  are  not  now, 
her  cairn,  and  posterity  would  have  remembered  her 
with  gratitude.  She  had  a  daring,  impetuous,  pas 
sionate,  arrogant  nature,  with  a  substratum  of  coarse 
ness;  like  George  Sand's  Helene,  whom  she  admired, 
"  she  could  hear  so  well  the  terrene  voice,  yet  keep 
her  eyes  fixed  on  the  stars."  To  love  what  is  beyond 
one's  reach  and  to  aspire  after  it,  to  try  to  silence  the 
discords  of  one's  nature  and  attune  it  to  a  sweet  and 
noble  harmony,  are  not  aspirations  and  endeavors 
so  common  that  they  can  pass  without  comment. 
However  glaring  her  defects,  there  was  no  littleness 
in  Margaret  Fuller.  She  was  never  a  rich  woman, 
but  her  purse  was  always  open  like  her  heart  and 
mind,  and  she  gave  generously  of  it,  often  to  her  own 
actual  discomfort,  and  without  hope  of  return.  Fear 
less  and  stanch  in  friendship  she  knew  how  to  be. 
"  Do  not,  I  implore  you,"  she  writes,  "  wish  to  exile 
me  from  the  dark  hour.  The  manly  mind  might  love 
best  in  the  triumphant  hour ;  but  the  woman  could 
no  more  stay  from  the  foot  of  the  cross  than  from 
the  transfiguration." 

All  who  have  written  of  her  have  spoken  of  the 
extraordinary  power  that  she  exercised  over  the  per 
sons  whom  she  met,  drawing  confidences  from  those 
who  were  not  confidential,  melting  the  glassy  reserve 
of  the  cautious,  and  possessing  herself  of  secrets  hid 
den  even  from  the  revealer's  dearest  friends.  This 


Transcendental  Movement  in  New  England   141 

power  belonged  to  a  rare  social  instinct,  a  wide  sym 
pathy,  a  sure  tact.  Margaret  Fuller  liked  to  know 
people.  She  loved  to  listen  to  the  beating  of  a 
human  heart.  Her  intellectual  curiosity  gave  her  a 
large  tolerance  in  which  one  felt  secure  from  a  narrow 
interpretation.  Her  eager  desire  to  know  life  in  all 
its  varied  activity  found  a  deep  satisfaction  in  learning 
its  experiences  from  others.  The  opportunity  to 
praise  or  reproach  gratified  her  innate  love  of  power, 
and  the  ability  to  attract  others  in  such  a  way  that 
they  gave  her,  not  the  superficial  life  which  the  world 
had  of  them,  but  the  very  depths  and  centres  of  their 
being,  gratified  her  vanity  in  no  common  degree. 
That  she  never  abused  these  confidences,  that  she 
never  used  her  power  for  vulgar  ends,  but  held  every 
one  whom  she  met  ever  level,  ever  true  to  his  highest 
duty,  is  worthy  of  all  praise.  "  We  never  met,"  said 
James  F.  Clarke  of  Margaret,  "  without  my  feeling 
that  she  was  ready  to  be  interested  in  all  my  thoughts, 
to  love  those  whom  I  loved,  to  watch  my  progress,  to 
rebuke  my  faults  and  follies,  to  encourage  within  me 
every  generous  and  pure  aspiration ;  to  demand  of 
me  always  the  best  I  could  be  or  do,  and  to  be  satis 
fied  with  no  mediocrity,  no  conformity  to  any  low 
standard." 

"  Persons  were  her  game,"  says  Emerson  of  Mar 
garet;  and  so  they  were,  but  they  were  dangerous 
game  to  her  inflammable  temperament,  her  "  sultry 
Southern  nature,"  and  good  and  evil  came  of  it. 
Good  came  of  it,  in  that  it  broadened  and  ripened 
her,  softened  the  asperities  of  her  nature,  and  made 
her  fitter  for  the  work  that  she  aspired  to  do.  But 
evil  came  of  it,  in  that  she  ended  with  being  scorched 


142    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

by  her  own  fire.  A  feverish  emotionalism  poisoned 
her  enjoyment  of  a  calm,  rational  friendship  with 
Emerson,  whose  cool  reserve  she  could  not  melt  with 
all  her  arts  and  tricks  of  sympathy.  Moonlight  could 
not  have  been  sweeter  and  milder  than  his  attractive 
and  irritating  serenity.  She  would  have  given  the 
world  to  break  it;  to  see  a  new  light  in  the  eyes,  a 
faint  flush  of  color  on  the  cheeks,  a  nervous  trembling 
in  the  calm,  cool  hand  outstretched  to  hers.  But  she 
never  saw  that  change  in  him,  and  all  her  efforts 
rather  chilled  him  into  a  more  helpless  silence,  though 
they  did  not  break  a  friendship  which  she  learned  at 
last  to  value  and  be  grateful  for  as  it  was  given  her. 
She  was  a  woman  of  remarkable  talent,  who  mis 
took  a  passionate  love  of  beauty  and  a  passionate 
desire  to  reproduce  it  for  the  power  to  fulfil  that 
desire,  and  lost  herself  in  futile  excitements,  She 
was  not  content  to  see  things  as  they  are  but  as  she 
thought  they  ought  to  be,  and  lost  the  real  world  for 
a  romantic  dream  world  of  her  own  creation.  She 
was  impatient  of  slow,  intellectual  growth,  incapable 
of  loving  knowledge  for  itself  alone  and  of  bearing 
the  privations  and  lonely  obscurity  of  the  earnest 
scholar's  life,  and  sacrificed  enduring  glory  for  the 
fleeting  glory  of  an  hour.  But  if  she  missed  the 
literary  fame  she  coveted,  her  life  was  by  no  means  a 
failure,  but  had  its  beauty  and  meaning,  of  which  no 
uncertain  reflections  have  come  down  to  us.  To 
those  who  knew  her  she  was  an  intellectual  stimulus, 
a  source  of  inspiration,  and  many  lives  were  enriched 
by  her  influence. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

RALPH   WALDO   EMERSON  (1803-1882) 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  was  born  in  Bos 
ton,  May  25,  1803.  In  many  respects  he  is  one 
of  the  most  interesting  men  of  America ;  the  descend 
ant  of  a  long  line  of  New  England  ministers,  himself 
a  Unitarian  clergyman  in  his  early  youth,  he  illus 
trates  in  a  remarkable  degree  both  the  influence  of 
heredity  and  that  of  environment.  His  ancestors  on 
his  father's  side  were  men  of  stern  enthusiasm  and 
rectitude.  His  mother,  an  energetic  woman  of  sweet 
and  serious  piety,  was  left  a  widow  with  six  children, 
her  husband  having  died  at  the  early  age  of  forty. 
To  support  herself  and  children,  Mrs.  Emerson  took 
boarders,  worked  hard,  lived  frugally,  but  managed  to 
give  her  children  the  best  education  within  reach. 

There  were  times  when  poverty  sorely  pinched  the 
little  household,  making  it  necessary  to  choose  be 
tween  material  comforts  and  educational  advantages, 
but  the  choice  was  always  rightly  made.  Ralph  and 
his  brother  Edward,  says  Emerson's  biographer, 
Cabot,  "  had  but  one  great  coat  between  them,  and 
had  to  take  turns  in  going  without  and  in  bearing  the 
taunts  of  vulgar-minded  school-fellows  inquiring 
'Whose  turn  is  it  to  wear  the  coat  to-day?"  The 
edge  of  hunger  was  sometimes  dulled  by  stories  of 
heroic  endurance.  The  teller  of  these  stories,  Mary 


144    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Moody  Emerson,  an  aunt  of  the  children,  was  a 
woman  of  remarkable  vigor  of  intellect,  though  eccen 
tric  to  a  degree  approaching  unsoundness.  It  was 
she  who  stimulated  her  nephews  to  intellectual  exer 
tion  by  keeping  before  them  the  loftiest  ideals,  and 
awakening  in  them  a  sense  of  the  incalculable  supe 
riority  of  mental  riches  to  any  form  of  material 
wealth. 

It  was  to  this  aunt  more  than  to  any  other  person 
that  Emerson  was  indebted  for  certain  tastes,  notably 
his  love  of  nature,  and  certain  lofty  strains  of  thought, 
—  a  hatred  of  what  is  mean  and  trivial  in  life,  a  scorn 
of  anything  that  disturbs  the  soul's  serenity  and 
blocks  its  view  of  what  is  true  and  eternal  with  what 
is  false,  merely  eye-dazzling,  and  temporary.  Years 
afterward,  in  recognition  of  the  value  of  the  discipline 
of  these  early  years  of  poverty  and  struggle,  Emerson 
wrote :  — 

"The  wise  workman  will  not  regret  the  poverty  or  the 
solitude  which  brought  out  his  working  talents.  ...  A  Fifth- 
avenue  landlord,  a  West-end  householder  is  not  the  highest 
style  of  man  ;  and  though  good  hearts  and  sound  minds  are 
of  no  condition,  yet  he  who  is  to  be  wise  for  many  must  not 
be  protected.  He  must  know  the  huts  where  poor  men  lie, 
and  the  chores  which  poor  men  do.  The  first-class  minds, 
^Esop,  Socrates,  Franklin,  had  the  poor  man's  feeling  and 
mortification.  A  rich  man  was  never  insulted  in  his  life,  but 
this  man  must  be  stung.  A  rich  man  was  never  in  danger 
from  cold  or  hunger  or  war  or  ruffians,  but  you  can  see  he 
was  not,  from  the  moderation  of  his  ideas.  'T  is  a  fatal  dis 
advantage  to  be  cockered  and  to  eat  too  much  cake.  What 
tests  of  manhood  could  he  stand  ?  Take  him  out  of  his  pro 
tections.  He  is  a  good  bookkeeper  or  he  is  a  shrewd  adviser 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  145 

in  the  insurance  office,  perhaps  he  could  pass  a  college 
examination  and  take  his  degree ;  perhaps  he  can  give  wise 
counsel  in  a  court  of  law.  Now  plant  him  down  among  farm 
ers,  firemen,  Indians,  and  emigrants.  Set  a  dog  on  him  j 
try  him  with  a  course  of  mobs.  Send  him  to  Kansas,  to 
Pike's  Peak,  to  Oregon ;  and  if  he  have  true  faculty,  this  may 
be  the  element  he  wants  and  he  will  come  out  of  it  with 
braver  wisdom  and  manly  powers.  ^Esop,  Saadi,  Cervantes, 
Reynard,  have  been  taken  by  corsairs,  left  for  dead,  sold  for 
slaves,  and  know  the  realities  of  life." 

Emerson  was  but  three  years  old  when  he  was  first 
sent  to  school.  He  was  not  precocious,  and  distin 
guished  himself  neither  at  school  nor  at  Harvard, 
which  he  entered  in  his  fifteenth  year.  As  a  youth, 
he  was  much  what  he  was  as  a  man,  mild,  equable  in 
temper,  kind  and  affable,  observing  and  self-contained. 
He  was  not  fond  of  athletic  sports,  and  was  hardly 
spirited  enough  to  be  popular  with  the  average 
student.  He  wrote  verses,  and,  like  most  youthful 
writers  of  verses,  hated  mathematics,  diligently  read 
the  poets,  and  studied  languages. 

Edward  Everett  was  at  that  time  professor  of 
Greek  at  Harvard,  and  George  Ticknor  filled  the 
chair  of  modern  languages.  Emerson  was  a  faithful 
attendant  at  the  lectures  of  these  two  scholars ;  but, 
according  to  his  classmate  Josiah  Quincy,  he  gave 
"  no  sign  of  the  power  that  was  fashioning  itself  for 
leadership  in  a  new  time.  He  was  quiet,  unobtrusive, 
and  only  a  fair  scholar  according  to  the  standard  of 
the  college  authorities." 

After  his  graduation  from  Harvard,  in  1821,  Emer 
son  taught  school  for  three  years,  but  he  so  heartily 
disliked  his  occupation  that  his  biographer  refers  to 


146     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

this  period  as  the  "  one  gloomy  passage  in  his  life." 
Writing  to  a  friend  in  1822,  Emerson  says:  — 

"  To  judge  from  my  own  happy  feelings,  I  am  fain  to 
think  that  since  commencement  a  hundred  angry  pens  have 
been  daily  dashed  into  the  sable  flood  to  deplore  and  curse 
the  destiny  of  those  who  teach.  Poor,  wretched,  hungry, 
starving  souls  !  How  my  heart  bleeds  for  you  !  Better  tug 
at  the  oar,  dig  the  mine,  or  saw  wood :  better  sow  hemp  or 
hang  with  it  than  sow  the  seeds  of  instruction." 

In  this  same  letter  Emerson,  who  had  up  to  this 
time  been  called  Ralph,  warns  his  correspondent  that 
he  has  altered  his  name  from  Ralph  to  Waldo,  and 
wishes  him  to  "  be  sure  and  drop  the  first."  From 
this  time  his  letters  are  always  signed  Waldo. 

A  year  later  we  find  him  deliberately  attempting  to 
cultivate  a  delight  in  nature,  and  perhaps  there  is  not 
a  better  instance  anywhere  of  the  success  attending 
the  cultivation  of  a  taste  than  this  experience  of  one 
of  our  foremost  nature-lovers.  In  his  early  youth  he 
had  been  quite  indifferent  to  the  charms  of  which  his 
aunt  Mary  had  so  repeatedly  written  and  spoken  to 
him,  hoping  to  disunite  him,  so  she  said,  "  from 
travelling  with  the  souls  of  other  men ;  of  living  and 
breathing,  reading  and  writing,  with  one  vital,  time- 
fated  idea,  their  opinion."  Now  he  is  resolved  upon 
enjoying  these  delights  of  which  the  poets  and  his 
aunt  speak  so  promisingly,  and  in  a  letter  to  a  friend 
written  in  1823  we  have  a  relation  of  his  expe 
rience  :  — 

"  I  am  seeking  to  put  myself  on  a  footing  of  old  acquaintance 
with  nature  as  a  poet  should ;  but  the  fair  divinity  is  rather 
shy  of  my  advances,  and  I  confess  I  cannot  find  myself  quite 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  147 

as  perfectly  at  home  on  the  rock  and  in  the  wood  as  my  an 
cient  and  I  might  say  my  infant  aspiration  led  me  to  expect. 
My  aunt  (of  whom  I  think  you  have  heard  before,  and  who 
is  alone  among  women)  has  spent  a  great  part  of  her  life  in 
the  country,  is  an  idolater  of  nature,  and  counts  but  a  small 
number  who  merit  the  privilege  of  dwelling  among  the 
mountains,  —  the  coarse  thrifty  cit  profanes  the  grove  by  his 
presence,  —  and  she  was  anxious  that  her  nephew  might  hold 
high  and  reverential  notions,  regarding  it  as  the  temple 
where  God  and  the  mind  are  to  be  studied  and  adored,  and 
where  the  fiery  soul  can  begin  a  premature  communion  with 
the  other  world. 

"  When  I  took  my  book  therefore  to  the  woods,  I  found 
nature  not  half  poetical,  not  half  visionary  enough.  There 
was  nothing  which  the  most  froward  imagination  would  con 
strue  for  a  moment  into  a  satyr  or  dryad.  No  Greek  or 
Roman  or  even  English  fantasy  could  deceive  me  one  instant 
into  the  belief  of  more  than  met  the  eye.  In  short,  I  found 
that  I  had  transplanted  into  the  new  place  my  entire  per 
sonal  identity,  and  was  grievously  disappointed." 

A  good  many  years  were  to  pass  before  Emerson 
learned  that  the  lovers  of  nature  do  not  woo  her  with 
a  book  in  the  hand,  nor  seek  for  satyrs  and  dryads, 
nor  suggestions  of  them,  instead  of  common  flowers 
and  trees.  It  is  plain  by  the  tone  of  this  letter  that 
Emerson  regarded  himself  as  a  poet,  but  he  had  as 
yet  no  definite  literary  plans,  but  was  preparing  him 
self  for  the  ministry  as  the  calling  most  in  harmony 
with  his  character  and  with  his  aspiration  to  be  of 
some  service  to  the  world. 

He  was  ordained  in  1826,  and  preached  his  first 
public  sermon  at  Waltham.  About  this  time  his  eye 
sight  and  general  health  were  affected  from  excessive 
study  and  deficient  exercise,  and  the  year  following 


148     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

his  ordination  a  pain  in  his  lungs  drove  him  South, 
where  he  spent  the  winter  at  St.  Augustine,  Florida. 
In  view  of  the  fact  that  during  the  antislavery  agita 
tion  prior  to  the  Civil  War,  Emerson's  was  one  of  the 
most  eloquent  and  emphatic  voices  to  be  heard 
against  the  evils  of  slavery,  it  is  singular  that  though 
he  witnessed  the  buying  and  selling  of  slaves  during 
his  stay  in  the  South,  there  is  no  evidence  of  his  in 
dignation  at  the  sight,  no  scathing  and  burning  word 
spoken  then  for  justice  and  humanity. 

The  truth  is,  Emerson's  was  a  sluggish  tempera 
ment,  slow  to  feel,  slow  to  think ;  but  he  had  a  sus 
ceptible  though  not  strong  imagination,  a  passionate 
admiration  for  eloquence,  an  unerring  instinct  that 
taught  him  the  sources  of  power,  and  a  supreme 
wish  to  lay  hold  of  them.  None  knew  his  limitations 
so  well  as  he.  "  Can  you  not  awaken,"  he  writes  to 
his  aunt,  "  a  sympathetic  activity  in  torpid  facul 
ties?  Whatever  Heaven  has  given  me  or  withheld, 
my  feelings,  or  the  expression  of  them,  is  very 
cold,  my  understanding  and  my  tongue  slow  and 
unaffecting." 

On  his  return  from  the  South,  Emerson  was  chosen 
to  fill  the  pulpit  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston  during 
the  absence  of  its  pastor,  Frothingham.  In  the  spring 
of  1829  he  was  appointed  colleague  of  Mr.  Ware, 
minister  of  the  Second  Church  in  Boston.  In  Sep 
tember  of  the  same  year  he  married  Ellen  Louisa 
Tucker,  a  frail,  consumptive  young  girl,  who  died  two 
years  later.  Mr.  Ware  resigned  a  few  weeks  subse 
quent  to  the  appointment  of  Emerson,  who  was  thus 
left  in  sole  charge  of  the  pastoral  work.  This  work 
soon  grew  to  be  as  much  of  a  stricture  to  him  as 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  149 

teaching  had  been.  He  had  an  extraordinary  catho 
licity,  and  truth  of  any  character  did  not  seem  to  him 
to  be  the  special  property  of  any  particular  sect.  He 
did  not  always  feel  himself  in  the  mood  which  he 
believed  suitable  for  the  fulfilment  of  his  duties,  and 
the  performance  of  them  in  an  alien  frame  of  mind 
seemed  nothing  else  than  sacrilege.  Nor  was  he  by 
temperament  a  man  of  warm  sympathies  yielding 
easily  to  the  personality  of  others,  and  he  was  there 
fore  unfitted  for  the  happy  performance  of  pastoral 
duties.  There  is  a  story  told  of  a  Revolutionary  vete 
ran's  calling  Emerson  to  his  death-bed  for  spiritual 
consolation,  and  in  his  wrath  at  the  latter's  hesitancy, 
saying,  "  Young  man,  if  you  don't  know  your  business, 
you  had  better  go  home."  However,  whether  he 
knew  his  business  or  not,  Emerson  retained  his  con 
nection  with  the  church  for  three  years,  and  then 
resigned  his  charge  on  the  plea  that  he  could  not 
regard  the  Lord's  Supper  as  a  sacrament,  and  could 
not  conscientiously  administer  it  as  such. 

This  resignation  was  not  made  without  a  severe 
struggle.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  had  never  felt 
himself  entirely  in  harmony  with  his  work,  he  valued 
it  highly  as  an  opportunity  for  the  utterance  of  the 
noblest  spiritual  truths  and  the  exercise  of  the  finest 
spiritual  influence.  The  temptation  to  compromise, 
or  to  yield  this  point  in  question,  was  strong  in  him. 
He  reasoned  with  himself  that  it  is  "  not  worth  while 
for  them  who  charge  others  with  exalting  forms  above 
the  moon  to  fear  forms  themselves  with  extravagant 
dislike ;  "  that  he  ought  not  to  bury  his  "  talent  in 
the  earth  with  his  indignation  at  this  windmill."  He 
writes  in  his  journal :  — 


150    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  Though  the  thing  may  be  useless  and  even  pernicious, 
do  not  destroy  what  is  good  and  useful  in  a  high  degree 
rather  than  comply  with  what  is  hurtful  in  a  small  degree.  .  .  . 
I  will  not,  because  we  may  not  all  think  alike  of  the  means, 
fight  so  strenuously  against  the  means  as  to  miss  of  the  end 
which  we  all  value  alike.  I  think  Jesus  did  not  mean  to  insti 
tute  a  perpetual  celebration,  but  that  a  commemoration  of 
him  would  be  useful.  Others  think  that  Jesus  did  establish 
this  one.  ...  I  know  very  well  that  it  is  a  bad  sign  for  a 
man  to  be  too  conscientious  and  stick  at  gnats.  The  most 
desperate  scoundrels  have  been  the  over-refiners.  Without 
accommodation,  society  is  impracticable.  But  this  ordi 
nance  is  esteemed  the  most  sacred  of  religious  institutions, 
and  I  cannot  go  habitually  to  an  institution  which  they 
esteem  holiest  with  indifference  or  dislike." 

This  ended  the  matter.  Whatever  virtue  there 
might  be  in  tolerance  or  accommodation,  there  was 
certainly  none  in  hypocrisy  for  the  high-souled  Emer 
son,  and  the  resignation  was  reluctantly  given  and 
unwillingly  accepted.  The  young  pastor  was  some 
what  chagrined  at  the  result,  hoping  that  his  congre 
gation  would  agree  to  his  terms ;  but  he  was  suffering 
in  health  again,  and  decided  to  leave  for  a  time  the 
scene  of  his  disappointments  and  chagrins.  In 
December,  1832,  he  sailed  for  the  Mediterranean, 
visited  Sicily,  Italy,  neither  excited  by  nor  thoroughly 
interested  in  all  the  wonders  of  the  old  world,  seeking 
ever  intellectual  excitement, — seeking  the  man  who 
was  to  inspire  him.  In  Rome  he  received  from  a 
friend  of  Carlyle's  a  letter  of  introduction  to  the  great 
Scotchman,  who  was  then  a  comparatively  obscure 
writer,  although  his  articles  in  the  English  reviews 
had  impressed  Emerson  with  a  conviction  of  his 
unusual  powers. 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  151 

In  Florence,  Emerson  met  Walter  Savage  Landor. 
From  Florence  he  went  to  Switzerland  and  France; 
Paris  he  thought  "  a  loud  modern  New  York  of  a 
place."  In  London  he  saw  Coleridge,  and  hoped  to 
see  Carlyle  in  Edinburgh,  but  learning  of  his  lonely 
residence  at  Craigenputtock,  he  drove  across  the 
moors  from  Dumfries  and  spent  the  afternoon  and 
night  there.  From  this  interview  there  sprang  up 
an  affection  and  life-long  friendship  between  these 
two  men,  so  wholly  unlike  except  in  their  deep  love 
and  reverent  seeking  for  the  truth;  and  in  the  cor 
respondence  which  resulted  from  this  new  tie  we 
have  a  most  beautiful  record  of  fine,  manly  friend 
ship.  At  Rydal  Mount  Emerson  visited  Wordsworth. 
He  had  now  seen  what  was  more  to  him  than  moun 
tain  or  ocean,  city  or  woodland,  —  the  faces  of  the 
greatest  living  English  writers,  —  and  in  his  journal  at 
sea,  his  tentative  thoughts,  his  yearnings  for  a  great 
teacher,  are  crystallized  into  those  solid  convictions 
that  make  the  burden  of  his  subsequent  essays, 
namely:  — 

"  A  man  contains  all  that  is  needful  to  his  government 
within  himself.  He  is  made  a  law  unto  himself.  All  real 
good  or  evil  that  can  befall  him  must  be  from  himself.  He 
only  can  do  himself  any  good  or  any  harm.  Nothing  can 
be  given  to  him,  or  taken  from  him,  but  always  there  's  a 
compensation.  .  .  .  The  purpose  of  life  seems  to  be  to  ac 
quaint  man  with  himself.  He  is  not  to  live  to  the  future  as 
described  to  him,  but  to  live  to  the  real  future  by  living  to 
the  real  present.  The  highest  revelation  is  that  God  is  in 
every  man.  Milton  describes  himself  in  his  letter  to  Diodati 
as  enamored  of  moral  perfection.  He  did  not  love  it  more 
than  I.  That  which  I  cannot  yet  declare  has  been  my  angel, 


152     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

from  childhood  until  now.  It  has  separated  me  from  men. 
It  has  watered  my  pillow.  It  has  driven  sleep  from  my  bed. 
It  has  tortured  me  from  guilt.  It  has  inspired  me  with 
hope.  It  cannot  be  defeated  by  my  defeats.  It  cannot  be 
questioned,  though  all  the  martyrs  apostatize.  It  is  always 
the  glory  that  shall  be  revealed  ;  it  is  the  open  secret  of  the 
universe." 

A  man  has  made  great  strides  toward  culture  and 
toward  moral  dignity  and  rectitude  of  conduct  when 
he  learns  to  be  self-reliant,  —  learns  to  recognize  and 
obey  the  law  of  his  own  being.  Emerson  had  sought 
in  great  men  some  extraordinary  and  contagious 
virtue,  some  happy  inspiration  by  which  the  dark 
places  in  his  own  life  were  to  be  made  light.  He  had 
gone  to  meet  them  in  the  romantic  spirit  in  which  he 
had  gone  to  nature  to  find  satyrs  and  dryads,  or  gone 
as  he  said  to  the  wonders  of  Italian  painting,  fancying 
"  the  great  pictures  would  be  great  strangers  ;  some 
surprising  combination  of  color  and  form ;  a  foreign 
wonder,  barbaric  pearl  and  gold  ;  "  but  finding  instead 
that  "  genius  left  to  novices  the  gay  and  fantastic  and 
ostentatious,  and  pierced  directly  to  the  simple  and 
true ;  that  it  was  familiar  and  sincere ;  that  it  was  the 
old  eternal  fact  .  .  .  the  plain  you  and  me  I  knew  so 
well."  In  the  same  manner  he  found  that  great  men 
were  not  the  fortunate  possessors  of  all  forms  of  truth, 
but  humble  seekers  like  himself,  —  differing  only  from 
ordinary  men  in  their  passionate  devotion  to  the 
search  of  it,  and  in  their  capacity  to  receive  it  whether 
painful  or  pleasant. 

On  his  return  from  Europe,  Emerson  continued  for 
four  years  to  preach  from  various  pulpits,  without 
accepting  any  regular  charge,  or  making  any  claim  to 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  153 

ministerial  authority.  The  settlement  of  the  Tucker 
estate  in  1834  brought  him  a  comfortable  income 
from  his  dead  wife's  portion,  and  relieved  him  from 
any  pressing  pecuniary  care.  The  same  year  brought 
other  notable  changes  in  his  life.  The  death  of  his 
brother  Edward  occurred  under  painful  circum 
stances.  A  young  man  of  remarkable  gifts  and 
commonly  considered  much  more  brilliant  than  his 
brother  Waldo,  he  had  ruined  his  health  by  exces 
sive  study  and  brought  on  an  attack  of  acute  mania. 
After  a  short  confinement  in  an  asylum  in  Charles- 
town,  he  recovered,  but  exiled  himself  to  the  West 
Indies,  where  he  died.  Not  long  after  Edward's  death, 
Waldo  and  his  mother  were  invited  by  Dr.  Ripley,  of 
Concord,  to  make  their  home  with  him  in  the  Old 
Manse.  Another  brother,  Charles,  was  engaged  to 
Miss  Elizabeth  Hoar,  of  Concord,  and  intended  to 
begin  practising  law  there.  The  beautiful  little 
village  was  within  easy  reach  of  Boston,  and  offered 
temptations  of  privacy  to  the  scholar  which  Emerson 
could  not  resist.  In  the  course  of  a  year  he  married 
Miss  Lydia  Jackson,  of  Plymouth,  —  a  stately,  digni 
fied  woman,  a  few  years  his  senior,  —  bought  a  house 
in  Concord,  and  settled  there  for  life. 

To  Miss  Jackson,  who  wished  that  they  should  live 
in  her  old  colonial  mansion  at  Plymouth,  he  writes  of 
Concord  and  himself:  — 

"  I  must  win  you  to  love  it.  I  am  born  a  poet,  —  of  a 
low  class  without  doubt,  yet  a  poet.  That  is  my  nature  and 
vocation.  My  singing,  to  be  sure,  is  very  husky,  and  is  for 
the  most  part  in  prose ;  still  I  am  a  poet  in  the  sense  of  a 
perceiver  and  dear  lover  of  the  harmonies  that  are  in  the 
soul  and  in  matter,  and  especially  of  the  correspondence 


154    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

between  these  and  those.  A  sunset,  a  forest,  a  snow-storm, 
a  certain  river-view  are  more  to  me  than  many  friends,  and 
do  ordinarily  divide  my  day  with  my  books.  Wherever  I 
go,  therefore,  I  guard  and  study  my  rambling  propensities.'7 

At  Concord  these  "  rambling  propensities "  were 
indulged  in  the  afternoon,  while  the  morning  was 
spent  in  study  and  the  evening  in  the  company  of 
his  family. 

The  year  1836  was  another  eventful  one  to  Emerson. 
It  saw  the  death  of  his  brother  Charles,  the  birth  of 
his  first  child,  —  a  beautiful  boy  whom  he  called 
Waldo,  who  died  at  the  age  of  five,  —  and  the  publi 
cation  of  his  first  work,  "  Nature,"  —  a  slender  volume 
that  attracted  little  attention,  and  sold  so  slowly  that 
twelve  years  elapsed  before  the  first  edition  of  five 
hundred  copies  was  exhausted.  But  this  want  of 
success  did  not  disconcert  the  author.  If  the  public 
would  not  read  his  book,  it  listened  willingly  to  his 
lectures ;  and  this  intercourse  with  the  public  not  only 
satisfied  his  desire  to  be  heard,  but  it  proved  a  whole 
some  discipline  whose  value  he  was  not  slow  to 
recognize. 

"  It  is  because  I  am  so  ill  a  member  of  society,"  he 
writes,  "  because  men  turn  me  by  their  mere  presence 
to  wood  and  stone,  because  I  do  not  get  the  lesson  of 
the  world  where  it  is  set  before  me,  that  I  need  more 
than  others  to  run  out  to  new  places  and  multiply  my 
chances  for  observation  and  communion."  Forty 
years  he  remained  in  the  lecture  field.  There  he 
tested  his  ideas ;  there  he  learned  more  of  his  fellow- 
men,  whom  no  man  was  ever  more  eager  or  more 
unfitted  to  understand.  His  lectures  subsequently 
formed  the  material  of  his  Essays,  the  first  volume  of 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  155 

which  appeared  in  1841.  Five  years  later  his  poems 
were  published :  if  they  often  lack  the  music  and 
emotion  of  verse,  they  are  not  the  less  a  hearty 
and  condensed  expression  of  his  delight  in  beauty 
and  nobility  of  character  among  men,  and  the  lessons 
of  cheer  and  encouragement  nature  had  taught  him. 

In  1847  he  made  a  second  visit  to  England,  where 
he  was  received  with  marked  favor.  He  revisited 
France,  and  this  time  pronounced  Paris  "  a  place  of 
the  largest  liberty  in  the  civilized  world,"  and  de 
clared  that  in  case  of  ever  needing  a  place  of  diver 
sion  and  independence  Paris  should  be  his  "  best 
bower  anchor."  In  1850  he  published  "  Representa 
tive  Men,"  following  it  six  years  later  with  "  English 
Traits,"  —  a  work  which  has  always  been  more  ad 
mired  in  America  than  in  England,  where  it  elicited 
many  unfavorable  comments  and  provoked  a  caustic 
letter  directed  to  the  author  by  Walter  Savage 
Landor. 

As  Emerson's  reputation  increased,  his  lecture 
tours,  which  had  been  mostly  confined  to  the  Eastern 
States,  were  extended  to  the  West.  His  comment  on 
this  new  experience  is  interesting :  — 

"  This  climate  and  people  are  a  new  test  for  the  wares  of 
a  man  of  letters.  All  his  thin,  watery  matter  freezes ;  't  is 
only  the  smallest  portion  of  alcohol  that  remains  good.  At 
the  Lyceum  the  stout  Illinoisian,  after  a  short  trial,  walks 
out  of  the  hall.  The  committee  tell  you  that  the  people 
want  a  hearty  laugh ;  and  Saxe  and  Park  Benjamin,  who  give 
this,  are  heard  with  joy." 

To  a  man  like  Emerson,  who  disliked  to  laugh  and 
was  never  heard  to  laugh  aloud,  a  severer  test  of  his 


156     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

powers  could  not  have  been  made.  But  we  find  traces 
of  his  efforts  to  meet  this  test  in  his  preservation  of 
witty  and  pointed  anecdotes,  and  in  his  Essay  entitled 
"  The  Comic."  The  wit  of  shrewdness  and  good  sense 
he  had  in  abundance,  but  of  sportiveness,  or  of  the 
flashing  wit  that  comes  from  a  keen  and  quick  per 
ception  of  incongruities,  he  had  not  a  particle.  He 
confessed  that  he  could  never  turn  a  page  in  Don 
Quixote  or  in  Dickens  without  a  yawn.  This  defi 
ciency  in  perception  was  a  result  of  his  lack  of  sympa 
thetic  understanding  of  the  coarser  elements  of  human 
nature, — the  substratum  of  animalism  in  man.  He 
had  too  lofty,  sweet,  and  noble  a  nature  to  take  any 
account  of  human  infirmities.  One  feels  like  address 
ing  to  him  Aurelia's  speech  to  Meister :  — 

"  In  hearing  you  expound  the  mysteries  of  Shakespeare, 
one  would  think  you  had  just  descended  from  a  synod  of  the 
gods,  and  had  listened  there  while  they  were  taking  counsel 
how  to  form  men  ;  in  seeing  you  transact  with  your  fellows, 
I  could  imagine  you  to  be  the  first,  large-born  child  of  the 
creation,  standing  agape  and  gazing  with  strange  wonder 
ment  and  edifying  good  nature  at  lions  and  apes  and  sheep 
and  elephants,  and  true-heartedly  addressing  them  as  your 
equals,  simply  because  they  were  there  and  in  motion  like 
yourself." 

With  mqre  weakness,  more  susceptibility  on  the 
emotional  side  of  his  nature,  Emerson's  power  would 
have  been  immensely  increased.  But  his  suscep 
tibility  was  wholly  intellectual.  He  divined  men 
intellectually,  not  emotionally;  that  is,  he  saw  them 
through  the  mind's  eye ;  he  did  not  draw  near  them 
through  the  sympathetic  pulsations  of  his  own  heart. 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  157 

His  own  contact  with  men  was  a  continual  violation 
of  his  temperament  which  kept  him  inexorably  apart 
from  them.  He  knew  this  defect  in  himself,  he  real 
ized  what  it  cost  to  his  power,  and  he  strove  all  his 
life  to  overcome  it;  but  it  was  a  struggle  against  he 
redity,  a  struggle  against  the  accumulated  reserve  and 
systematic  repression  of  five  generations  of  clergy 
men,  and  Emerson  never  won  more  than  half  the 
victory.  He  won  that  half-victory  in  a  tolerance  so 
broad  that  it  hardly  escapes  the  license  of  intellectual 
anarchy;  and  he  won  it  in  a  manner  so  tactful,  so 
attractive,  that  it  seemed  a  continual  promise  of  the 
largest  and  most  intimate  friendship.  Yet  the  victory 
went  no  farther;  the  sweet,  low-pitched  voice,  the 
placid  smile,  the  deferential  attention  were  only  a 
beautiful  mask  for  the  concealment  of  the  most 
impenetrable  reserve. 

Henry  James,  the  elder,  writing  of  Emerson's  per 
sonality,  says : — 

"  On  the  whole,  I  may  say  that  at  first  I  was  greatly  dis 
appointed  in  him,  because  his  intellect  never  kept  the  prom 
ise  which  his  lovely  face  and  manners  held  out  to  me.  He 
was  to  my  senses  a  literal  divine  presence  in  the  house  with 
me  •  and  we  cannot  recognize  literal  divine  presences  in  our 
households  without  feeling  sure  that  they  will  be  able  to  say 
something  of  critical  importance  to  our  intellect.  It  turned 
out  that  any  average  old  dame  in  a  horse-car  would  have 
satisfied  my  intellectual  capacity  as  well  as  Emerson  .  .  . 
and  though  his  immense  personal  fascination  kept  up,  he  at 
once  lost  all  intellectual  prestige  to  my  regard.  I  even 
thought  that  I  had  never  seen  a  man  more  profoundly  devoid 
of  spiritual  understanding.  ...  In  his  books  or  public  capa 
city  he  was  constantly  electrifying  you  by  sayings  full  of 


158     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

divine  inspiration.  In  his  talk  or  private  capacity  he  was 
one  of  the  least  remunerative  men  I  ever  encountered.  No 
man  could  look  at  him  speaking  (or  when  he  was  silent 
either,  for  that  matter)  without  having  a  vision  of  the  divinest 
beauty.  But  when  you  went  to  him  to  hold  discourse  about 
the  wondrous  phenomena,  you  found  him  absolutely  devoid 
of  reflective  powers." 

Again,  when  asked  for  letters  that  had  passed 
between  him  and  his  eminent  correspondent,  James 
replied  :  — 

"  I  cannot  flatter  myself  that  any  letter  I  ever  wrote  to 
Emerson  is  worth  your  reading.  .  .  .  Emerson  always  kept 
me  at  such  arm's  length,  tasting  him,  sipping  him,  and  trying 
him,  to  make  sure  he  was  worthy  of  his  somewhat  prim  and 
bloodless  friendship,  that  it  was  fatiguing  to  write  him  letters. 
I  remember  well  what  maidenly  letters  I  used  to  receive  from 
him,  with  so  many  tentative  charms  of  expression  in  them 
that  if  he  had  been  a  woman,  one  would  have  delighted 
in  complimenting  him  ;  but,  as  it  was,  you  could  say  nothing 
about  them,  but  only  pocket  the  disappointment  they  brought. 
It  is  painful  to  recollect  now  the  silly  hope  that  I  had  along 
the  early  days  of  our  acquaintance,  that  if  I  went  on  listening, 
something  would  be  sure  to  drop  from  him  that  would  show 
me  an  infallible  way  out  of  this  perplexed  world,  for  nothing 
ever  came  but  epigrams,  sometimes  clever,  sometimes  not." 


In  explanation  of  this  singular  frigidity  it  is  inter 
esting  to  read  Emerson's  own  account  of  it.  He  says 
in  his  journal :  — 

"Some  people  are  born  public  souls,  and  live  with  all 
their  doors  open  to  the  street.  Close  beside  them  we  find 
the  lonely  man,  with  all  his  doors  shut,  reticent,  thoughtful, 
shrinking  from  crowds,  afraid  to  take  hold  of  hands ;  thank- 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  159 

fal  for  the  existence  of  the  other,  but  incapable  of  such  per 
formance,  wondering  at  its  possibility,  full  of  thoughts,  but 
paralyzed  and  silenced  instantly  by  these  boisterous  masters  ; 
and  though  loving  his  race,  discovering  at  last  that  he  has  no 
proper  sympathy  with  persons  but  only  with  their  genius  and 
aims.  He  is  solitary  because  he  has  society  in  his  own 
thought,  and  when  people  come  in,  they  drive  away  his 
society  and  isolate  him.  We  would  all  be  public  men  if  we 
could  afford  it.  I  am  wholly  private,  such  is  the  poverty  of 
my  constitution.  Heaven  'betrayed  me  to  a  book  and 
wrapped  me  in  a  gown.'  I  have  no  social  talent,  no  will, 
and  a  steady  appetite  for  insights  in  any  or  all  directions 
to  balance  my  manifold  imbecilities.  M.  Fuller  writes  me 
that  she  waits  for  my  lectures,  seeing  well,  after  much 
intercourse,  that  the  best  of  me  is  there.  She  says  very 
truly;  and  I  thought  it  a  good  remark  which  somebody 
repeated  here,  from  S.  S.,  that  I  *  always  seemed  to  be  on 
stilts.'  It  is  even  so.  Most  of  the  persons  I  see  in  my  own 
house  I  see  across  a  gulf.  I  cannot  go  to  them,  nor  can 
they  come  to  me.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  frigidity  and 
labor  of  my  speech  with  such.  You  might  turn  a  yoke  of 
oxen  between  every  pair  of  my  words,  and  the  behavior  is 
as  awkward  and  proud.  I  see  the  ludicrousness  of  the 
plight  as  well  as  they.  But  never  having  found  a  remedy,  I 
am  very  patient  of  this  folly  or  shame,  —  patient  of  my 
churlishness  in  the  belief  that  this  privation  has  certain  rich 
compensations." 

Though  he  was  a  public  lecturer  all  his  life,  Emer 
son  never  attained  easy,  spontaneous  utterance,  and 
rarely  attempted  even  the  shortest  speech  without 
careful  preparation.  "  I  remember,"  says  his  biog 
rapher,  "  his  getting  up  at  a  dinner  of  the  Saturday 
Club  on  the  Shakespeare  anniversary  in  1864  to 
which  some  guests  had  been  invited,  looking  about 


160    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

him  tranquilly  for  a  minute  or  two,  and  then  sitting 
down,  serene  and  unabashed,  but  unable  to  say  a 
word  on  a  subject  so  familiar  to  his  thoughts  from 
boyhood."  Yet  this  hesitancy,  this  coolness  were 
associated  with  a  sweetness  and  nobility  of  character 
and  a  rectitude  of  conduct  rarely  equalled.  Life  was 
no  mere  play-day  to  him :  it  was  an  arena  for  heroic 
struggle  and  endurance,  and  he  was  intent  on  train 
ing  every  faculty  for  the  contest,  not  grimly  and 
despairingly,  but  cheerfully  and  confident  of  victory. 
But  his  lot  had  fallen  on  evil  times.  "  The  dark 
slavery  question"  was  to  him,  as  he  said,  "  like  Ham 
let's  task  imposed  on  so  unfit  an  agent  as  Hamlet." 
The  Fugitive  Slave  Law  of  1850,  "making  every 
man  in  Massachusetts  liable  to  official  summons  in 
aid  of  the  return  of  escaped  slaves,"  roused  his  indig 
nation  to  white  heat.  He  felt,  he  said,  "an  infamy 
in  the  air,"  that  "justice  and  mercy  had  been  or 
dained  subject  to  fine  and  imprisonment,"  and  "  a 
crime  had  been  written  into  the  statute  books." 
Then  the  slow  tongue  quickened,  and  uttered  swift 
burning  words  in  denunciation  of  Webster,  the  abettor 
of  the  law ;  and  when  at  Cambridge  he  was  inter 
rupted  by  hisses,  shouts,  and  cat-calls,  he  stood 
unmoved  until  the  tumult  had  subsided,  and  then 
continued  "  as  if  nothing  had  happened,"  narrates  a 
spectator.  "  There  was  no  repetition,  no  allusion  to 
what  had  been  going  on,  no  sign  that  he  was  moved, 
and  I  cannot  describe  with  what  added  weight  the 
next  words  fell." 

In  the  beginning  of  the  slavery  agitation  Emerson 
advocated  peaceful  measures,  the  buying  and  freeing 
of  the  slaves,  and  was  not  at  all  in  sympathy  with 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  161 

the  ultra-abolitionists  who  preferred  disunion,  war, 
general  ruin, — anything  to  the  outrage  of  slave- 
holding.  But  the  dastardly  assault  upon  Sumner  in 
the  Senate  Chamber  and  John  Brown's  insurrection 
kindled  him  into  pure  flame,  burned  away  all  his 
hesitancy,  and  when  the  war  broke  out  he  could  say : 
"  We  have  been  homeless,  some  of  us,  for  some  years 
past,  say  since  1850,  but  now  we  have  a  country 
again."  And  when  he  viewed  the  warlike  prepara 
tions  in  Charlestown  navy-yard,  he  said,  "  Ah !  some 
times  gunpowder  smells  good." 

Emerson  wrote  little  after  1866,  and  in  1870  his 
memory  began  to  fail  him.  He  could  not  recall 
the  right  word  in  conversation,  as  when  he  said  to 
some  one  standing  in  the  sunlight,  while  he  himself 
was  sheltered  by  a  large  tree,  "  Is  n't  there  too  much 
heaven  on  you  there?"  In  the  summer  of  1872  his 
house  burned  down.  A  check  for  five  thousand 
dollars  and  a  contribution  of  nearly  twelve  thousand 
dollars  were  immediately  sent  to  him  by  friends ;  and 
he  was  persuaded  to  take  another  trip  to  Europe, 
including  Greece  and  the  Nile,  in  company  with  his 
eldest  daughter,  Ellen.  He  saw  Carlyle  again  at 
Chelsea,  visited  Paris,  Rome,  made  a  tour  in  Egypt, 
returned  to  England  and  thence  home.  All  Concord 
was  at  the  station  to  meet  him,  and  he  was  escorted 
with  music  and  a  band  of  school-children  to  his  own 
house  rebuilt  as  it  had  been  before  the  fire. 

In  the  spring  of  1882  a  cold  culminating  in  pneu 
monia  resulted  in  his  death  shortly  before  his  seventy- 
seventh  birthday.  He  was  buried  in  Sleepy  Hollow 
Cemetery  at  Concord,  —  a  beautiful  bit  of  natural 
woodland,  where  the  squirrels  still  hold  possession  of 


1 62     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

the  trees,  and  all  sorts  of  wild-flowers,  shrubs,  and 
berries  grow  in  undisturbed  profusion. 

French's  bust  of  Emerson,  made  in  1879,  is  a  most 
satisfactory  and  beautiful  representation  of  his  nobly 
intellectual  face,  with  its  sharply  cut  outlines,  its  large, 
hawklike  nose,  firm,  wide,  sweetly  smiling  mouth. 
According  to  French's  statement,  there  was  a  great 
difference  in  the  formation  of  the  two  sides  of  Emer 
son's  face,  and  there  was  more  movement  on  the  left 
side  than  on  the  right ;  but  it  is  very  probable  that 
this  difference  was  not  so  marked  as  to  be  generally 
noticeable.  His  eyes  were  of  a  bright  blue  color,  and 
though  weak  in  youth,  subsequently  became  so 
strong  that  he  did  not  use  glasses  in  reading  his 
lectures  till  he  was  sixty-four.  His  brown  hair  was 
abundant,  and  retained  its  youthful  color  until  late  in 
life.  In  figure  he  was  tall  and  spare,  six  feet  in 
height,  and  ordinarily  weighed  one  hundred  and  forty 
and  one-half  pounds. 

In  his  social  and  domestic  relations,  Emerson  left 
no  duty  or  attention  unperformed.  He  was  public- 
spirited,  ready  with  the  helpful  word  and  deed  on  all 
important  occasions.  He  served  on  the  school- 
board  and  was  a  member  of  a  town  club,  the  Social 
Circle.  Though  he  had  freed  himself  from  all  con 
ventional  claims  of  creed  or  sect,  he  recognized  their 
social  value  and  gave  his  support  to  them.  He  dis 
liked  going  to  church  himself;  but  he  liked  to  have 
other  people  attend  religious  services,  and  when  a 
motion  to  dispense  with  compulsory  attendance  on 
morning  prayers  was  made  before  the  Harvard  board, 
of  which  he  was  a  member  from  '67  to  '79,  he  voted 
against  it.  He  likewise  once  advised  a  friend  not  to 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  163 

resign  a  pastoral  charge  on  the  ground  of  difference 
of  opinion,  although  he  himself  had  pursued  a  con 
trary  course.  Though  no  one  was  ever  more  fearless 
or  more  free  in  his  utterance  of  offensive  truths, 
there  was  a  noble  sweetness,  a  high  moral  tone  in 
his  utterance  of  them  that  took  away  their  sting. 
He  was  the  very  gentlest  of  image-breakers,  "  an 
iconoclast,"  says  Holmes,  "  who  took  down  our  idols 
from  their  pedestals  so  tenderly  that  it  seemed  like 
an  act  of  worship." 

In  his  family  he  was  kind,  affectionate,  generous, 
and  particularly  solicitous  for  the  comfort  of  his 
domestics.  Perhaps  no  man  ever  "respected  the  bur 
den  "  more  than  he.  His  son  Edward  says  that  he 
built  his  own  fire,  and  always  insisted  upon  carrying 
his  own  valise  to  and  from  the  train.  His  life  was 
undoubtedly  one  of  noble  endeavor,  lofty  aspiration, 
and  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  teachings  of  his 
pen. 

His  literary  methods  were  peculiar.  His  biog 
rapher  assures  us  that  he  was  by  no  means  so  great 
a  reader  as  the  variety  and  number  of  his  quotations 
suggest,  and  that  there  is  reason  to  think  that  "  even 
where  the  coincidence  (as  with  Fichte,  Schleiermacher, 
Hegel)  seemed  too  close  to  be  accidental,  he  had  no 
first-hand  acquaintance  with  the  books."  He  was  in 
the  habit  of  keeping  a  journal ;  and  he  recorded  in  it 
the  thoughts  awakened  in  him  by  reading,  observa 
tion,  or  any  remarkable  saying  that  he  had  heard. 
Dr.  Hedge  relates  that  he  came  to  him  late  one  even 
ing  to  get  the  particulars  of  some  anecdote  they  had 
both  heard  that  day.  He  could  not  sleep,  he  said, 
until  he  had  made  a  note  of  the  whole.  This  vigilant, 


164    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

tireless  attention  resulted  in  the  accumulation    of  a 
vast  number  of  brilliant  observations  and   aphorisms, 
from  which  his  essays  and  lectures  were  built  up   by 
selection  and  combination.     Fiction,  in  the  shape  of 
novels,  he  could  not  read.     "  Pope   and   his   school," 
he  said,  "  wrote  poetry  fit  to   be   put  around   frosted 
cake."     Walter   Scott   "wrote   a   rhymed   traveller's 
guide   to   Scotland."     Than   Tennyson's,   he   thinks, 
"  there  is  no  finer  ear  nor  more  command  of  the  keys 
of  language.  .  .  .    But  he  wants  a  subject,  and  climbs 
no  mount  of  vision  to  bring  its  secrets  to  the  people." 
Wordsworth's  "  Ode   on    Immortality "  he    calls   the 
"  high-water  mark  which  the  intellect  has  reached  in 
this  age,"  and  he  thought   Coleridge's    "  Biographia 
Literaria  "  the  best  work  of  criticism  in  the  English 
language.      Two  expedients  for  literary  culture  he 
deems  indispensable  :   "  First,  sit  alone.     In  your  ar 
rangements   for    residence,    see   that    you    have    a 
chamber  to  yourself,  though  you   sell  overcoat   and 
wear   a  blanket.      Second,  keep  a  journal.     Pay  so 
much  honor  to  the  visits  of  truth  to  your  mind   as  to 
record  them." 

Of  the  character  of  Emerson's  intellect,  it  is  difficult 
to  speak  with  certainty.  It  presents  the  most  puz 
zling  contradictions.  It  produces,  at  first,  the  im 
pression  of  phenomenal  breadth  and  assimilative 
power.  But  a  closer  scrutiny  reveals  the  fact  that 
what  was  mistaken  for  assimilation  is  only  collection. 
The  fundamental  characteristic  of  this  mind  is  an  in 
satiable  curiosity.  It  pushes  into  the  remotest 
corners  of  the  intellectual  world.  It  gathers  up  all 
the  ideas  that  attract  it,  and  the  result  is  a  hetero- 
genous  collection  that  interests  and  stimulates,  but 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  165 

is  utterly  lacking  in  anything  like  plan  or  consistency. 
Never  was  a  mind  more  fatally  lacking  in  logical 
power  than  Emerson's.  He  utters  half-truths  with  the 
force  of  whole  truths.  He  makes  sweeping  general 
izations  on  insufficient  data.  He  never  sees  the 
whole  truth  at  once ;  he  sees  only  a  fragment  of  it, 
but  he  views  it  at  so  close  a  range  that  the  fragment 
assumes  the  proportions  of  the  whole  to  him,  and  he 
falls  into  extravagance  when  he  describes  it.  Another 
point  of  view  brings  another  fragment  of  truth  into 
prominence,  and  he  at  once  forgets  what  he  has  seen, 
and  falls  into  equally  extravagant  valuation  of  that 
which  now  absorbs  his  attention.  Hence  those  al 
most  incomprehensible  oscillations  from  idealism  to 
materialism,  from  the  wildest  of  fanciful  speculations 
to  the  sternest  of  scientific  truths,  and  a  practical 
shrewdness  as  serviceable  as  that  of  any  day-laborer 
who  earns  his  bread  and  butter  by  it,  —  from  the 
most  extravagant  laudations  of  Swedenborg  to  the 
warmest  appreciative  sympathy  with  Montaigne. 
Hence,  too,  the  comparative  worthlessness  of  a  great 
deal  of  his  criticism.  Anything  that  stimulated  his 
intellect  and  gave  him  a  new  outlook  into  the  world, 
were  it  ever  so  strange  a  one,  blinded  him  to  its  real 
value  to  the  world  at  large.  This  is  the  reason  of  his 
singular  overrating  of  such  eccentric  men  as  Alcott, 
Jones  Very,  and  Walt  Whitman. 

Certainly  no  man  ever  feared  inconsistency  less. 
He  follows  to  the  letter  his  own  advice  :  "  Speak  what 
you  think  to-day  in  words  as  hard  as  cannon-balls, 
and  to-morrow  speak  what  to-morrow  thinks  in  hard 
words  again,  though  it  contradict  everything  you  said 
to-day."  At  one  time  he  tells  us  that  the  poet  can 


1 66     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

articulate  the  world,  that  he  is  in  possession  of  all  the 
secrets ;  at  another,  he  laments  the  world's  inarticu 
lateness,  talks  of  the  unfathomed  secret,  says  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  touching  reality,  and  that  an 
"  innavigable  sea  washes  with  silent  waves  between  us 
and  the  things  we  aim  at  and  converse  with."  Atone 
time  he  is  pure  idealist  and  affirms  the  exterior  world 
to  be  but  the  "  externization  of  the  soul,  an  appearance 
that  bursts  into  life  in  its  presence  and  vanishes  with 
it."  At  another  time  he  is  the  most  uncompromising 
and  scornful  of  materialists,  comes  to  his  own,  as  he 
says,  and  "  makes  friends  with  matter  which  the  am 
bitious  chatter  of  the  schools  would  persuade  us  to 
despise,  and  is  ashamed  out  of  his  nonsense."  There 
are  times  when  he  prefers  twilight  to  daylight,  ghosts 
to  living  men,  and  is  avid  of  an  intellectual  sensation 
at  any  price,  and  longs  to  pass  from  dream  to  dream 
in  a  kind  of  mental  intoxication.  It  is  at  such  times 
that  he  thinks  "  nothing  of  any  value  in  books  ex 
cepting  the  transcendental  and  extraordinary."  Then, 
again,  he  thinks  he  will  read  only  the  commonest 
books,  the  Bible,  Homer,  Dante,  Shakespeare ;  sings 
the  commonplace,  and  relishes  every  hour  and  what 
it  brings  him,  "  the  pot  luck  of  the  day  as  heartily  as 
the  oldest  gossip  in  the  bar-room."  At  one  time  we 
find  in  him  a  childish  credulity  in  the  perfectibility 
of  man  :  he  believes  that  "  we  are  all  the  children  of 
genius,  the  children  of  virtue  ; "  he  does  not  believe 
that  the  difference  of  opinion  and  character  in  men  is 
organic ;  there  come  to  every  soul  visitations  of  a 
diviner  presence.  "  I  see  not,"  he  cries  in  indignation, 
"  if  we  be  once  caught  in  this  trap  of  so-called  sciences, 
any  escape  from  the  links  of  the  chain  of  physical  ne- 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  167 

cessity.  Given  such  an  embryo,  such  a  history  must 
follow.  On  this  platform  one  lives  in  a  sty  of  sen 
sualism  and  would  soon  come  to  suicide."  Yet,  in  his 
essay  on  Fate,  he  drops  cheerfully  into  this  hated  "  sty," 
and  pertinently  inquires  :  — 

"  How  shall  a  man  escape  from  his  ancestors  ;  or  draw  off 
from  his  veins  the  black  drop  which  he  drew  from  his  father's 
or  mother's  life  ?  .  .  .  Men  are  what  their  mothers  made  them. 
You  may  as  well  ask  a  loom  which  weaves  huckaback  why  it 
does  not  make  cashmere,  as  expect  poetry  from  this  engineer 
or  a  mathematical  discovery  from  that  jobber.  Ask  the  dig 
ger  in  the  ditch  to  explain  Newton's  laws ;  the  fine  organs 
of  his  brain  have  been  pinched  by  over-work  and  squalid 
poverty  from  father  to  son  for  a  hundred  years.  When  each 
comes  forth  from  his  mother's  womb,  the  gate  of  gifts  closes 
behind  him.  Let  him  value  his  hands,  and  feel  he  has  but 
one  pair.  So  he  has  but  one  future,  and  that  is  already  pre 
determined  in  his  lobes  and  described  in  that  little  fatty  face, 
pig  eye,  and  squat  form.  All  the  privilege  and  all  the  legis 
lation  of  the  world  cannot  meddle  or  help  to  make  a  poet  or 
prince  of  him/7 

At  one  time  he  speaks  of  that  "  extraordinary  and 
incomputable  agent,"  personal  influence,  the  "  oc 
cult  power  that  men  exert  on  each  other,"  and  again 
he  says  that  "  human  life  and  its  persons  are  poor 
empirical  pretensions.  A  personal  influence  is  an 
ign  is-fatuus. ' ' 

In  his  essay  entitled  "  Nominalist  and  Realist,"  he 
classes  Swedenborgianism  with  Mesmerism,  Fourier- 
ism,  and  the  Millennial  Church,  and  calls  them  all "  poor 
pretensions  enough;"  but  in  "Representative  Men" 
he  writes  of  Swedenborg  in  terms  of  extravagant 
laudation,  calls  him  the  last  Father  in  the  Church, 


1 68    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

predicts  that  it  is  not  likely  to  have  another,  styles 
him  a  colossal  soul  lying  vast  abroad  on  his  times, 
uncomprehended  by  them,  and  lauds  his  scientific 
discoveries,  when,  to  quote  Maudsley,  a  genuine  scien 
tist,  "  scientifically  he  [Swedenborg]  is  as  sounding 
brass  or  a  tinkling  cymbal."  The  truth  is,  Emerson 
was  incapable  of  scientific  criticism,  but  he  had  in  a 
large  measure  the  gift  of  panegyric,  and  he  used  it 
unsparingly,  evidently  clinging  fast  to  his  dictum,  "  It 
is  fatal  to  spiritual  health  to  lose  your  admiration." 
When  he  writes  of  Plato,  he  says  that  his  are  the  only 
books  that  deserve  Omar's  fanatical  compliment  to 
the  Koran,  "  Burn  the  libraries,  for  their  value  is  in 
this  book."  When  he  writes  of  Swedenborg,  he 
declares  that  "  his  writings  would  be  a  sufficient 
library  to  a  lonely  and  athletic  student,"  that  "  Plato 
is  a  gownsman  "  to  him,  and  that  he  "  is  awful  to 
Caesar,  and  Lycurgus  himself  would  bow  to  him." 
Wilkinson,  his  English  translator,  is  a  pupil  "  with  a 
coequal  vigor  of  understanding  and  imagination  com 
parable  only  to  Lord  Bacon's."  But  later  we  find 
him  telling  us  that  "  Shakespeare  is  as  much  out  of 
the  category  of  eminent  authors  as  he  is  out  of  the 
crowd.  He  is  inconceivably  wise ;  the  others  con 
ceivably.  A  good  reader  can  in  a  sort  nestle  into 
Plato's  brain  and  think  from  there,  but  not  into 
Shakespeare's ;  "  but  when  we  come  to  Goethe,  we 
are  told  that  "  the  old  eternal  genius  who  built  the 
world  has  confided  himself  more  to  this  man  than 
any  other." 

But  besides  wanting  the  faculty  of  combination  so 
necessary  to  a  critic,  Emerson  was  equally  wanting 
in  a  no  less  essential  faculty,  —  the  dramatic  power,  — 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  169 

the  power  of  losing  one's  self  in  the  personality  of 
another.  In  his  "  Representative  Men "  we  find 
nothing  like  the  vivid  portraiture  of  its  prototype, 
Carlyle's  "  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship."  It  is  rich 
in  isolated  sentences  of  acute  penetration,  but  its 
final  judgments  are  unsound,  and  its  attempts  at 
portraiture  fail  to  give  an  impression  of  harmonious 
unity.  Character-painting  is  not  analysis,  it  is  syn 
thesis.  It  is  the  inextricable  blending  of  light  and 
shade  into  a  lifelike  whole.  Emerson's  method  is 
directly  the  opposite  of  this.  In  his  characterization 
of  Napoleon,  for  example,  he  really  sketches  two  men. 
He  draws  up  all  Napoleon's  excellences  on  one  side, 
and  all  his  defects  on  another,  and  so  gives  us  two 
catalogues  instead  of  one  man. 

This  remarkable  peculiarity  of  Emerson's  intellect 
by  which  he  could  perceive  only  in  fragments  is  as 
remarkably  illustrated  in  his  style.  He  excels  in 
short,  graphic  sentences  of  wonderful  freshness  and 
vigor,  but  he  is  incapable  of  continuity.  He  thinks, 
not  in  continuous  sequences,  but  by  flashes  that  are 
sometimes  sparks  and  sometimes  pale  gleams.  He 
writes :  — 

"  If  Minerva  offered  me  a  gift  and  an  option,  I  would  say, 
give  me  continuity,  I  am  tired  of  scraps,  I  do  not  wish  to  be 
a  literary  or  intellectual  chiffonier.  Away  with  this  Jew's 
rag-bag  of  ends  and  tufts  of  brocade,  velvet  and  cloth  of  gold, 
and  let  me  spin  some  yards  or  miles  of  helpful  twine  ;  a  clew 
to  lead  to  one  kingly  truth,  —  a  cord  to  bind  wholesome  and 
belonging  facts." 

But  Minerva  never  conferred  this  gift.  To  the  end 
of  his  life,  he  continued  to  get  over  the  ground  like  a 


170    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

kangaroo,  by  what  he  calls  "  successive  saltations."  To 
read  him  is  like  crossing  a  brook  on  stepping-stones 
instead  of  plunging  into  the  stream  and  either  wading 
or  swimming  across.  You  are  not  immersed  in 
thought;  you  lave  in  no  genial,  bracing  current. 
You  walk  dry-shod  from  point  to  point  of  thought, 
but  in  a  bracing  wind,  to  be  sure.  Whatever  his 
subject,  he  has  but  one  manner  of  expression,  which 
comes  at  last  to  bear  the  same  relation  to  the  varied 
and  flexible  utterance  of  imaginative  genius  that  the 
sharp  terse  click  of  the  telegraph  does  to  the  mar 
vellously  expressive  human  voice.  But  there  are 
times,  and  they  are  not  infrequent,  when  the  message 
is  of  so  noble  and  sweet  a  character  that  the  expres 
sion  of  it  sings  to  the  ear  like  music ;  then,  nothing 
can  be  richer,  nothing  finer  than  his  periods. 

Every  man  whose  influence  on  the  world  has  been 
a  wholesome  one  has  a  right  to  be  judged  by  what 
is  best  in  him,  and  few  men  have  a  better  claim  to 
such  a  right  than  Emerson.  If  we  must  deny  to  him 
the  title  of  a  deep  thinker,  because  he  is  not  logical, 
because  he  sometimes  follows  intellectual  sensations 
rather  than  truths,  because  he  dreads  scientific  con 
clusions  that  disturb  his  ideals,  and  so  seems,  at  times, 
not  to  love  truth  herself  so  well  as  what  he  thinks 
ought  to  be  true ;  if  we  must  deny  to  him  the  right  to 
be  called  a  great  poet  because  he  speaks  not  to  the 
universal  but  to  the  particular  consciousness,  and 
because  his  verses  are  only  his  essays  cut  up  into 
regular  lines  and  tagged  with  rhyme  which  is  not 
always  faultless,  by  reason  of  his  inability,  as  he  once 
confessed  to  Lowell,  "  to  apprehend  the  value  of 
accent  in  verse ;  "  if  we  must  deny  critical  acumen 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  171 

at  times  to  a  man  who  could  speak  of  Alcott  as  "  the 
most  extraordinary  man  and  the  highest  genius  of 
his  time,"  —  there  is  one  office  of  a  great  man  which 
cannot  be  denied  him :  he  is  a  great  teacher,  an  in 
comparable  character-former.  "  My  special  parish," 
he  was  wont  to  say,  "  is  young  men  inquiring  their 
way  of  life."  That  was  true. 

However  numerous  his  contradictions  and  vagaries, 
they  are  not  vital;  he  was  sound  at  core,  and  it  is 
with  this  sound  and  constant  element  in  him  that  we 
have  most  to  do.  He  allowed  his  intellect  the  free 
dom  of  all  sorts  of  eccentricities,  but  in  practice  he 
is  firmly  rooted  in  common  sense.  He  is  everywhere 
the  scholar's  friend,  the  friend  of  thought,  par  excel 
lence,  —  the  defender  of  the  intellectual  life.  This  is 
the  one  indisputable  territory  in  which  he  reigns 
supreme.  It  is  the  burden  of  all  he  has  to  say. 
Over  and  over  again  he  asserts  the  beauty  of  fear 
lessness  and  independence,  self-centrality  and  calm 
ness,  the  supremacy  of  the  moral  law,  and  the  union 
of  the  highest  intelligence  with  the  willing  obedience 
to  that  law.  He  teaches  a  fine  scorn  of  worldliness : 

"What  is  rich?  Are  you  rich  enough  to  help  anybody? 
to  succor  the  unfashionable  and  the  eccentric  ?  rich  enough 
to  make  the  Canadian  in  his  wagon,  the  itinerant  with  his 
consul's  paper  which  commends  him  f  to  the  charitable/  the 
swarthy  Italian  with  his  few  broken  words  of  English,  the 
lame  pauper  hunted  by  overseers  from  town  to  town,  even 
the  poor  insane  or  besotted  wreck  of  man  or  woman,  feel  the 
noble  exception  of  your  presence  and  your  house  from  the 
general  bleakness  and  stoniness  ;  to  make  such  feel  that  they 
were  greeted  with  a  voice  which  made  them  both  remember 
and  hope?  What  is  vulgar  but  to  refuse  the  claim  of  an 


172     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

acute  and  conclusive  reason?  What  is  gentle,  but  to  allow 
it  and  give  their  heart  and  yours  one  holiday  from  the 
national  caution?  Without  the  rich  heart,  wealth  is  an  ugly 
beggar.  The  king  of  Schiraz  could  not  afford  to  be  so 
bountiful  as  the  poor  Osman  who  dwelt  at  his  gate.  Osman 
had  a  humanity  so  broad  and  deep  that  although  his  speech 
was  so  bold  and  free  with  the  Koran  as  to  disgust  all  the  der 
vishes,  yet  was  there  never  a  poor  outcast,  eccentric  or  insane 
man,  some  fool  who  had  cut  off  his  beard,  or  who  had  been 
mutilated  under  a  vow,  or  had  a  pet  madness  in  his  brain, 
but  fled  at  once  to  him.  That  great  heart  lay  there  so  sunny 
and  hospitable  in  the  centre  of  the  country  that  it  seemed  as 
if  the  instinct  of  all  sufferers  drew  them  to  his  side.  And  the 
madness  which  he  harbored  he  did  not  share.  Is  not  this  to 
be  rich  ?  this  only  to  be  rightly  rich  ?  " 

Something  of  this  generous,  intellectual  hospitality 
Emerson  himself  had,  and  during  his  long  lifetime 
Concord  was  the  Mecca  of  all  the  intellectually  lame, 
halt,  and  blind  who  could  find  their  way  to  him  for 
assistance  in  foisting  their  new  universal  panacea 
upon  the  notice  of  the  world.  But  it  was  not  only 
the  intellectually  lame  and  halt  that  looked  to  him  for 
guidance.  Young  men  with  earnest  purposes,  and 
mental  and  moral  vigor  to  carry  them  out,  listened  to 
him  with  reverent  delight.  Speaking  in  America  of 
the  eloquent  voices  to  which  he  had  listened  when 
an  undergraduate  at  Oxford,  —  Newman's,  Carlyle's, 
Goethe's,  —  Matthew  Arnold  says :  — 

"  And,  besides  those  voices,  there  came  to  us,  in  that  old 
Oxford  time,  a  voice  from  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  a  clear 
and  pure  voice,  which  for  my  ear,  at  any  rate,  brought  a  strain 
as  new  and  moving  and  unforgettable  as  the  strain  of  Goethe 
and  Carlyle.  .  .  .  To  us  at  Oxford,  Emerson  was  but  a  voice 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  173 

speaking  from  three  thousand  miles  away.  But  so  well  he 
spoke,  that  from  that  time  Boston  Bay  and  Concord  were 
names  invested  to  my  ear  with  a  sentiment  akin  to  that  which 
invests  for  me  the  names  of  Oxford  and  of  Weimar. 
Snatches  of  Emerson's  strain  fixed  themselves  in  my  mind  as 
imperishably  as  any  of  the  eloquent  words  which  I  have  been 
just  now  quoting." 

Lowell,  too,  pays  an  eloquent  tribute  to  Emerson's 
electrifying  power  over  the  young  men  of  his  time. 
He  spoke  to  all  that  is  best  and  noble  and  inspiring 
in  human  nature.  He  was  uniformly  hopeful,  opti 
mistic.  "  A  low,  hopeless  spirit,"  he  says,  "  puts  out 
the  eyes."  He  had  brave  words  for  the  lonely 
thinker  to  whose  lot  discouragement  and  failure  fall 
more  frequently  than  to  that  of  any  other  worker. 
He  told  him  that  the  scholar  has  drawn  the  white  lot 
in  life,  even  though  he  must  bear  poverty,  insult, 
weariness,  and  repute  of  failure :  that  the  scholar  is 
here  "  to  fill  others  with  love  and  courage  by  confirm 
ing  their  trust  in  the  love  and  wisdom  which  are  at 
the  heart  of  all  things ;  to  affirm  noble  sentiments,  to 
hear  them  wherever  spoken,  out  of  the  deeps  of  ages, 
out  of  the  obscurities  of  barbarous  life,  and  to  repub- 
lish  them;  to  untune  nobody,  but  to  draw  all  men 
after  the  truth,  and  to  keep  men  spiritual  and  sweet." 

Those  essays  in  which  Emerson  himself  fulfils  this 
office  —  "  The  Man  of  Letters,"  "  The  Scholar," 
"  Self-Reliance,"  "  Heroism,"  "  Spiritual  Laws," 
"  Friendship,"  and  others  of  that  strain  —  are  the 
fullest  of  that  fine,  helpful  tonic  thought  which  made 
his  power,  and  which  assure  him  an  immortal  place 
among  the  great  teachers  of  mankind. 

In  the  light  of  the  preceding  chapter  on  the  Tran- 


174    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

scendentalists  in  New  England,  it  is  easy  to  recognize 
that  element  which  makes  the  vague  unsatisfactory 
note  in  much  that  Emerson  has  written,  —  that  note 
which  produces  in  his  readers  the  painful  doubt 
entertained  by  the  author  of  "  Sartor  Resartus  "  in 
regard  to  Herr  Teufelsdrockh,  —  whether  they  are  to 
find  firm  ground  to  stand  on,  or  only  a  cloud-covered 
abyss.  Emerson  was  of  his  time ;  he  spoke  its  con 
victions,  and  in  so  far  as  these  convictions  fall  short 
of  permanent  truth,  he  is  perishable.  But  there  is  in 
him  an  imperishable  element,  a  vein  of  pure  gold  that 
time  cannot  tarnish.  The  German  critic  Hermann 
Grimm,  writing  of  Emerson,  says  that  the  great  liter 
ary  artists  reconcile  him  to  life :  — 

"  What  oppressed  me  delights  me  now.  I  ho  longer  flee 
from  it,  and  it  is  transformed  into  beauty  in  my  hands.  All 
that  the  artists  touch  becomes  gold,  is  beautiful  as  if  God's 
finger  were  pointing  to  it,  and  a  mysterious  voice  whispered, 
1  Look  at  it  and  know  it/  and  I  have  the  strength  to  recog 
nize  it  as  long  as  they  show  it  to  me.  This  feeling  Emerson, 
too,  produces  in  me  in  the  purest  degree." 

John  Tyndall,  in  an  address  to  students,  said :  — 

"  The  reading  of  two  men,  neither  of  them  imbued  with 
the  spirit  of  modern  science,  —  neither  of  them,  indeed, 
friendly  to  that  spirit,  —  has  placed  me  here  to-day.  These 
men  are  the  English  Carlyle  and  the  American  Emerson.  I 
must  ever  gratefully  remember  that  through  three  long,  cold 
German  winters  Carlyle  placed  me  in  my  tub,  even  when  ice 
was  on  its  surface,  at  five  o'clock  every  morning,  —  not  slav 
ishly,  but  cheerfully,  meeting  each  day's  studies  with  a  reso 
lute  will,  determined,  whether  victor  or  vanquished,  not  to 
shrink  from  difficulty.  I  never  should  have  gone  through 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  175 

Analytical  Geometry  and  Calculus  had  it  not  been  for  these 
men.  I  never  should  have  become  a  physical  investigator, 
and  hence  without  them  I  should  not  have  been  here  to-day. 
They  told  me  what  I  ought  to  do  in  a  way  that  caused  me  to 
do  it,  and  all  my  consequent  intellectual  action  is  to  be  traced 
to  this  purely  moral  force.  To  Carlyle  and  Emerson  I  ought 
to  add  Fichte,  the  greatest  representative  of  pure  idealism. 
These  three  unscientific  men  made  me  a  practical  scientific 
worker.  They  called  out,  '  Act ! '  I  hearkened  to  the  sum 
mons,  taking  the  liberty,  however,  of  determining  for  myself 
the  direction  which*  effort  was  to  take." 

We  can  pardon  many  shortcomings  to  the  writer 
who  can  exert  so  wonderful  and  noble  an  influence  as 
this.  Emerson  exerts  it  on  all  intellectual  readers. 
He  stimulates,  he  guides,  he  consoles,  he  encourages ; 
his  faults  are  the  faults  of  his  age ;  his  virtues  are  all 
his  own. 


CHAPTER    IX 

NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE    (1804-1864) 

IN  our  practical  American  life,  lying  all  firmly  out 
lined  in  the  clear  light  of  modern  times,  with 
no  shadowy  background  stretching  far  into  the  un- 
chronicled  past  to  temper  our  riotous,  youthful  vigor 
with  memorials  of  the  brevity  of  nations  and  of  indi 
viduals, —  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  stands  as  ideal  and 
unexpected  a  figure  as  his  own  beautiful  little  snow 
image  before  the  Heidenberg  stove  in  Mr.  Lindsey's 
parlor.  Only  he  is  in  no  danger  of  melting  away  so 
suddenly.  Of  no  other  American  writer  can  we  be 
so  certain  that  the  incommunicable  gift  of  genius, 
which  made  him  delight  his  contemporaries,  will 
delight  those  who  are  to  come  after  them  to  the 
remotest  time.  And  of  so  rare  a  character,  so  de 
pendent  on  prenatal  influences,  surroundings,  and 
constitutional  idiosyncrasies,  was  his  genius,  that  it 
is  probable  the  world  will  sooner  see  another  Shake 
speare  than  another  Hawthorne.  It  is  as  if  the  dark, 
blood-stained  soil  of  Puritanism  had  yielded  a  deli 
cate,  shrinking,  sensitive-leafed  plant  with  a  stainless 
blossom  and  exquisite  odor,  and  its  growth  were 
possible  in  no  other  soil.  And  so  long  as  the 
delight  in  beauty  and  fragrance  gives  an  added  value 
to  life,  so  long  will  this  sweet,  fair  blossom  delight 
mankind. 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  177 

In  the  old  burying-ground  of  Salem,  Massachusetts^ 
there  stands  a  slate  gravestone  erected  to  the  memory 
of  "  Colonel  John  Hathorne,  Esquire,"  who  died  in 
1717.  The  man  whose  dust  lies  here  was  a  harsh 
and  relentless  persecutor  of  innocent  men  and  women 
during  that  terrible  period  of  the  witchcraft  delusion 
in  the  early  history  of  Salem.  His  father  before  him 
had  persecuted  the  Quakers  with  the  same  relentless 
cruelty.  The  immediate  descendants  of  these  old 
Puritans  were  seafaring  men  who  continued  to  make 
Salem  their  home,  and  the  last  of  these  sailors, 
Captain  Hawthorne,  was  the  father  of  the  great 
novelist  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  who  was  born  in 
Salem  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  1804.  Captain  Haw 
thorne  died  of  yellow  fever  in  South  America.  Mrs. 
Hawthorne,  who  was  passionately  devoted  to  her 
husband,  lived,  after  his  death,  in  the  strictest  seclu 
sion  with  her  boy  and  two  little  girls,  Elizabeth  and 
Louisa.  Some  idea  of  the  closeness  of  this  seclusion 
may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  though  Hawthorne  and 
his  future  wife,  Sophia  Peabody,  passed  their  child 
hood  on  the  same  street  within  a  stone's-throw  of 
each  other,  they  never  met  until  they  were  both  of 
mature  years. 

But  to  the  boy,  Nathaniel,  this  retirement  was  in 
harmony  with  an  inherited  reserve  and  constitutional 
shyness  that  distinguished  him  all  his  life.  Fortu 
nately,  he  had  sound  lungs  and  a  good  digestion, 
and  was  in  no  danger  of  suffering  from  those  morbid 
moods  of  profound  dissatisfaction  with  life  which 
so  often  accompany  a  romantic  imagination.  When 
he  was  nine  or  ten  years  of  age,  his  mother  spent 
a  year  on  the  shore  of  Sebago  Lake  in  Maine,  and 


178     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

there  the  boy  hunted,  fished,  and  roamed  the  woods 
after  the  manner  of  boys  in  general.  On  his  return 
to  Salem,  he  was  placed  under  the  tutorship  of 
Joseph  Worcester,  the  lexicographer,  and  prepared 
for  Bowdoin  College,  which  he  entered  in  his  eigh 
teenth  year.  Among  his  classmates  at  Bowdoin 
were  the  poet  Longfellow,  and  the  distinguished 
naval  officer,  Horatio  Bridge,  with  the  latter  of  whom 
Hawthorne  formed  an  intimate  and  lifelong  friend 
ship.  In  the  class  ahead  of  him  was  Franklin  Pierce, 
subsequently  president  of  the  United  States  and 
another  of  Hawthorne's  warm  friends.  We  are  told 
that  though  Hawthorne  was  a  fine  scholar,  he  was  not 
a  brilliant  one,  —  a  statement  which  is  frequently  made 
of  youths  who  subsequently  distinguish  themselves  in 
literature.  A  mind  with  a  strong,  native  bent  toward 
any  particular  calling,  instinctively  turns  toward  that 
which  will  nourish  it.  It  may  conform  to  a  cer 
tain  extent  to  a  prescribed  course  of  instruction, 
but  its  best  energies  are  spent  on  that  to  which  its 
strong  inclinations  guide  it.  Hawthorne  was  obey 
ing  such  an  inclination  in  a  wide  reading,  thus  giving 
himself  the  best  possible  education  for  his  future 
work. 

After  his  graduation  from  Bowdoin  in  1825,  Haw 
thorne  returned  to  his  mother's  home  in  Union 
Street,  Salem,  and  devoted  himself  exclusively  to 
literature.  There,  for  twelve  years,  he  lived  the  life 
of  a  recluse,  studying  and  writing  incessantly.  His 
meals  were  often  left  at  his  locked  door.  If  he  went 
out  at  all,  it  was  for  the  most  part  at  night,  when 
nobody  saw  him ;  not  half  a  dozen  people  in  Salem 
outside  of  his  own  family  knew  of  his  existence.  For 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne 


179 


a  man  who  was  to  make  life  and  its  realities  the 
subject  of  his  pen,  it  was  hardly  the  best  possible 
training,  but  for  the  preservation  of  that  exquisite 
veil  of  romantic  ideality  through  which  youthful 
eyes  see  all  the  coarse  and  vulgar  realities  of  life 
softened  and  beautified,  nothing  could  have  been 
better.  Just  before  his  marriage  in  1842,  Haw 
thorne  writes  in  his  journal  of  this  period  of  his 
life  :  — 

"  Here  I  sit  in  my  old  accustomed  chamber,  where  I  used 
to  sit  in  days  gone  by.  Here  I  have  written  many  tales,  — 
many  that  have  been  burned  to  ashes,  many  that  doubtless 
deserved  the  same  fate.  ...  If  ever  I  have  a  biographer,  he 
ought  to  make  great  mention  of  this  chamber  in  my  memoirs, 
because  so  much  of  my  lonely  youth  was  wasted  here, 
and  here  my  mind  and  character  were  formed,  and  here 
I  have  been  glad  and  hopeful,  and  here  I  have  been  de 
spondent,  and  here  I  sat  a  long,  long  time,  patiently  waiting 
for  the  world  to  know  me,  and  sometimes  wondering  why  it 
did  not  know  me  sooner  or  whether  it  would  ever  know  me 
at  all,  —  at  least  till  I  were  in  my  grave.  And  sometimes 
it  seemed  as  if  I  were  already  in  the  grave,  with  only  life 
enough  to  be  chilled  and  benumbed.  But  oftener  I  was 
happy,  —  at  least  as  happy  as  I  then  knew  how  to  be  or  was 
aware  of  the  possibility  of  being.  By  and  by  the  world 
found  me  out  in  my  lonely  chamber,  and  called  me  forth, 
not  indeed  with  a  loud  roar  of  acclamation,  but  rather  with 
a  still  small  voice,  and  forth  I  went,  but  found  nothing  in  the 
world  preferable  to  my  old  solitude  till  now.  And  now  I 
begin  to  understand  why  I  was  imprisoned  so  many  years 
in  my  lonely  chamber,  and  why  I  could  never  break  through 
the  viewless  bolts  and  bars ;  for  if  I  had  sooner  made  my 
escape  into  the  world,  I  should  have  grown  hard  and  rough 
and  been  covered  with  earthly  dust,  and  my  heart  might 


i8o    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

have  become  callous  by  rude  encounter  with  the  multitude. 
.  .  .  But  living  in  solitude  till  the  fulness  of  time  was  come, 
I  still  kept  the  dews  of  my  youth  and  the  freshness  of  my 
heart.  ...  I  used  to  think  I  could  imagine  all  passions,  all 
feelings  and  states  of  the  heart  and  mind,  but  how  little  did 
I  know  ! " 

The  first  production  of  these  years  of  solitude  was 
a  romance,  entitled  "  Fanshawe,"  published  anony 
mously  in  1828.  It  is  a  somewhat  maudlin  story, 
named  after  its  hero,  a  solitary  student,  who  "scorned 
to  mingle  with  the  living  world  and  to  be  actuated 
by  its  motives,"  and  who  died  of  over-study.  As 
might  be  expected,  the  book  shows  neither  knowl 
edge  of  the  world  nor  of  the  human  heart,  and  is 
interesting  only  because  of  its  unconscious  autobio 
graphic  touches  that  reveal  something  of  the  mental 
peculiarities  of  the  youthful  dreamer,  its  author. 
"  Fanshawe "  attracted  little  or  no  attention,  and 
when  Hawthorne  reached  the  maturity  of  his  powers, 
he  was  ashamed  of  it  and  tried  to  suppress  it. 

The  book  which  first  made  the  reading  world  at 
all  curious  about  him  was  the  "  Twice  Told  Tales," 
a  collection  of  sketches  and  tales  that  were  first 
given  to  the  public  in  various  periodicals  and  news 
papers.  The  book  appeared  in  1837.  The  subtle 
analytical  power  it  revealed,  and  the  pure  limpid 
style  in  which  it  was  written,  proclaimed  it  the  work 
of  a  man  of  genius.  But  though  it  was  recognized 
as  such  by  those  who  were  capable  of  judging,  it  was 
not  of  a  character  to  meet  with  widespread  popu 
larity.  There  were  still  many  years  of  struggle  and 
effort  to  be  endured  by  this  solitary  and  sensitive 
genius,  who  had  already  known  the  sickening  dis- 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  181 

couragement  of  failure  and  the  bitterness  of  hope 
deferred.  The  "  Twice  Told  Tales  "  was  followed  by 
"Grandfather's  Chair,"  an  admirably  written  little 
volume  of  New  England  history,  consisting  of  clear 
and  picturesque  sketches  of  the  chief  events  and 
characters  in  the  history  of  Massachusetts,  from  the 
landing  of  the  Puritans  to  the  death  of  Samuel 
Adams  in  1803.  Nowhere  else  can  so  vivid  a  pan 
orama  of  our  early  history  be  found. 

In  1839  Bancroft  procured  Hawthorne  an  appoint 
ment  as  weigher  and  gauger  in  the  Boston  custom 
house.  He  retained  this  situation  during  the  re 
maining  two  years  of  the  Democratic  administration, 
and  lost  it  by  the  victory  of  the  Whigs  on  the  election 
of  Harrison.  In  the  mean  time  he  had  become  inter 
ested  in  Ripley's  social  reform  at  Brook  Farm,  and 
willingly  entered  his  name  among  the  first  share 
holders,  contributing  one  thousand  dollars  toward 
the  general  fund.  It  is  not  difficult  to  understand 
why  Hawthorne  joined  this  little  band  of  enthusiasts, 
any  more  than  it  is  difficult  to  see  why,  of  all  lives, 
that  which  they  had  planned  was  the  least  suited  to 
his  character  and  genius.  He  was  irresistibly  at 
tracted  by  whatever  promised  to  give  a  romantic 
tinge  to  life.  Mingled  with  this  attraction,  yet  per 
haps  less  strong,  was  the  hope  of  securing  an  eco 
nomical  and  congenial  home  for  himself  and  future 
wife,  —  and  the  larger  hope  that  a  more  generous, 
less  ignoble  life  were  possible  for  all  in  new  social 
forms,  governed,  as  he  said,  by  other  than  the  false 
and  cruel  principles  on  which  human  society  has  all 
along  been  based.  He  writes  in  "  The  Blithedale 
Romance":  — 


1 82    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  We  had  divorced  ourselves  from  pride,  and  were  striving 
to  supply  its  place  with  familiar  love.  We  meant  to  lessen  the 
laboring  man's  great  burden  of  toil,  by  performing  our  due 
share  of  it  at  the  cost  of  our  own  thews  and  sinews.  We 
sought  our  profit  by  mutual  aid,  instead  of  wresting  it  by  the 
strong  hand  from  an  enemy  or  filching  it  craftily  from  those 
less  shrewd  than  ourselves  (if  indeed  there  were  any  such 
in  New  England).  .  .  .  Therefore,  if  we  built  splendid 
castles  (phalansteries,  they  might  be  more  fitly  called),  and 
pictured  beautiful  scenes  among  the  fervid  coals  of  the 
hearth  around  which  we  were  clustering,  and  if  all  went  to 
rack  with  the  crumbling  embers  and  have  never  since  arisen 
out  of  the  ashes,  let  us  take  to  ourselves  no  shame.  In  my  own 
behalf  I  rejoice  that  I  should  once  think  better  of  the  world's 
improvability  than  it  deserved.  It  is  a  mistake  into  which  men 
seldom  fall  twice  in  a  lifetime,  or,  if  so,  the  rarer  and  higher 
is  the  nature  that  can  thus  magnanimously  persist  in  error." 

On  the  thirteenth  of  April,  1841,  Hawthorne  made 
the  first  entry  in  his  journal  from  Brook  Farm,  where 
he  had  arrived  in  just  such  a  snow-storm  as  he  after 
ward  described  in  "The  Blithedale  Romance."  "I 
intend,"  he  says,  "  to  convert  myself  into  a  milkmaid 
this  evening;  but  I  pray  heaven  that  Mr.  Ripley  may 
be  moved  to  assign  me  the  kindliest  cow  in  the  herd, 
otherwise  I  shall  perform  my  duty  with  fear  and 
trembling."  Being  a  milkmaid,  or,  as  he  later  ex 
pressed  it,  "  a  chambermaid  to  cows  and  pigs,"  soon 
lost  all  its  poetical  glamour,  and  became  the  veriest 
prose  to  poor  Hawthorne ;  and  he  writes,  under  date 
of  the  twelfth  of  August :  — 

"  Joyful  thought !  in  a  little  more  than  a  fortnight,  I  shall 
be  free  from  bondage,  free  to  enjoy  nature,  free  to  think 
and  feel.  Even  my  custom-house  experience  was  not  such 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  183 

a  thraldom  and  weariness.  Oh  !  labor  is  the  curse  of  the 
world,  and  nobody  can  meddle  with  it  without  becoming 
brutified.  Is  it  a  praiseworthy  matter  that  I  have  spent  five 
golden  months  in  providing  food  for  cows  and  horses?  It 
is  not  so." 

He  had  learned,  too,  that  no  system  of  artificial 
levelling  can  eradicate  the  natural  inequalities  among 
men,  and  that  men's  hands  may  touch  whose  minds 
are  separated  by  impassable  gulfs.  He  pronounced 
his  life  at  Brook  Farm 

"an  illusion,  a  masquerade,  a  pastoral,  a  counterfeit  Arcadia, 
in  which  we  men  and  women  were  making  a  play-day  of  the 
years  that  were  given  us  to  live  in.  ...  If  ever  I  have 
deserved  (which  has  not  often  been  the  case,  and  I  think 
never),  but  if  ever  I  did  deserve  to  be  soundly  cuffed  by  a 
fellow-mortal  for  secretly  putting  weight  upon  some  imagi 
nary  social  advantage,  it  must  have  been  while  I  was  striving 
to  prove  myself  ostentatiously  his  equal  and  no  more.  It 
was  while  I  sat  beside  him  on  his  cobbler's  bench,  or  clinked 
my  hoe  against  his  own  in  the  cornfield,  or  broke  the  same 
crust  of  bread,  my  earth-grimed  hand  to  his  at  our  noon 
tide  lunch.  The  poor,  proud  man  should  look  at  both  sides 
of  sympathy  like  this." 

Hawthorne  soon  put  an  end  to  this  unnatural  life 
by  abandoning  Brook  Farm  and  setting  up  a  house 
hold  for  himself.  He  had  been  engaged  for  some 
time  to  Sophia  Peabody,  a  woman  whose  nature  in 
its  exquisite  delicacy  and  susceptibility  was  akin  to 
his  own.  They  were  married  in  the  summer  of  1842, 
and  went  to  housekeeping  in  the  "  Old  Manse  "  at 
Concord.  In  this  beautiful  and  quiet  retreat  nearly 
four  years  of  unbroken  happiness  were  passed.  An- 


184    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

other  little  book  of  sketches,  the  "  Mosses  from  an 
Old  Manse,"  was  the  fruit  of  this  seclusion.  It  was 
published  in  1846,  and  in  the  same  year  Hawthorne 
received  an  appointment  as  surveyor  of  the  revenue 
at  the  custom-house  of  Salem,  and  removed  thither 
with  his  family. 

With  regard  to  Hawthorne's  intellectual  develop 
ment,  this  removal  was  one  of  the  most  important 
events  in  his  life.  It  brought  him  into  touch  with 
that  homely,  practical,  every-day  life  of  the  world,  so 
distasteful  to  him,  but  at  the  same  time  so  essential 
to  the  perfect  development  of  his  genius.  He  knew 
it,  and  said  of  this  experience :  — 

"  It  contributes  greatly  to  a  man's  moral  and  intellectual 
health  to  be  brought  into  habits  of  companionship  with 
individuals  unlike  himself,  who  care  little  for  his  pursuits,  and 
whose  sphere  and  abilities  he  must  go  out  of  himself  to 
appreciate.  .  .  .  After  my  fellowship  of  toil  and  impracticable 
schemes  with  the  dreamy  brethren  of  Brook  Farm ;  after 
living  for  three  years  within  the  subtle  influence  of  an  intel 
lect  like  Emerson's ;  after  those  wild  free  days  on  the  Assa- 
beth,  indulging  fantastic  speculations  beside  our  fire  of  fallen 
boughs  with  Ellery  Channing ;  after  talking  with  Thoreau 
about  pine-trees  and  Indian  relics  in  his  hermitage  at  Walden ; 
after  growing  fastidious  by  sympathy  with  the  classic  refine 
ment  of  Hillard's  culture ;  after  becoming  imbued  with  poetic 
sentiment  at  Longfellow's  hearthstone,  it  was  time,  at  length, 
that  I  should  exercise  other  faculties  of  my  nature,  and  nourish 
myself  with  food  for  which  I  had  hitherto  had  little  appetite. 
Even  the  old  Inspector  was  desirable  as  a  change  of  diet  to 
a  man  who  had  known  Alcott.  I  look  upon  it  as  an  evidence, 
in  some  measure,  of  a  system  naturally  well-balanced,  and 
lacking  no  essential  part  of  a  thorough  organization,  that 
with  such  associates  to  remember,  I  could  mingle  at  once 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  185 

with  men  of  altogether  different  qualities  and  never  murmur 
at  the  change. 

"  Literature,  its  exertions  and  objects  were  now  of  little 
moment  in  my  regard.  I  cared  not  at  that  period  for  books  ; 
they  were  apart  from  me.  Nature  —  except  human  nature 
—  the  nature  that  is  developed  in  earth  and  sky,  was  in  one 
sense  hidden  from  me,  and  all  the  imaginative  delight  where 
with  it  had  been  spiritualized  passed  away  out  of  my  mind. 
A  gift,  a  faculty,  if  it  had  not  departed,  was  suspended  and 
inanimate  within  me." 

But  the  literary  gift  awoke  again,  stirred  into  vigor 
by  an  appeal  to  an  imagination  always  susceptible  to 
the  mysteries  of  sin  and  its  terrible  consequences. 
One  rainy  day,  in  a  dusky,  cobwebbed  corner  of  an 
old  deserted  room  of  the  custom-house,  Hawthorne's 
attention  was  attracted  by  some  old  barrels  stored 
with  rubbish.  Burrowing  in  this  waste  of  ancient 
official  documents,  he  came  upon  a  package  once  the 
property  of  one  Jonathan  Pue,  a  local  antiquarian 
who  had  been  surveyor  of  customs  under  Governor 
Shirley.  On  opening  the  package,  he  discovered  a 
small  roll  of  manuscript  wrapped  in  a  moth-eaten  rag 
of  scarlet  cloth  richly  embroidered  with  the  letter  A. 
The  manuscript  contained  a  brief  relation  of  the  story 
of  Hester  Prynne,  who  had  lived  in  Massachusetts 
about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The 
dormant  fancy  was  all  alert  again.  The  revenue 
officers,  hearing  the  unwearied  tramp  of  the  musing 
author  as  he  paced  the  custom-house  day  after  day, 
used  to  remark  to  one  another,  "The  surveyor  is 
walking  the  quarter-deck."  But  the  surveyor,  obliv 
ious  of  weighers  and  gaugers,  was  standing  with 
Hester  Prynne  on  the  platform  of  the  pillory,  or 


1 86    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

walking  with  Arthur  Dimmesdale  among  the  early 
Puritans  of  Boston. 

The  inauguration  of  Taylor  in  1849  produced  a 
change  in  the  civil-service  employees,  and  Hawthorne 
lost  his  position.  It  was  a  fortunate  circumstance  for 
the  literary  world,  because  in  the  leisure  which  he 
now  enjoyed  Hawthorne  wrote  "  The  Scarlet  Letter," 
and  published  it  in  1850.  By  many  critics  this  work 
is  considered  his  masterpiece.  The  author,  who  had 
called  himself  the  "  obscurest  man  of  letters  in 
America,"  suddenly  found  himself  on  the  heights  of 
fame  and  popularity.  Success  stimulated  him  to 
further  effort.  He  removed  to  Lenox,  and  there 
among  the  Berkshire  Hills  he  wrote  "  The  House  of 
Seven  Gables,"  which  he  himself  thought  superior 
to  "The  Scarlet  Letter."  It  appeared  in  1851,  and 
was  followed  the  same  year  by  the  "  Wonder  Book," 
and  in  1852  by  "The  Blithedale  Romance,"  sug 
gested  by  his  Brook  Farm  experience.  This  same 
year  Hawthorne  went  back  to  Concord,  and  bought  a 
home  for  himself  on  the  old  Lexington  Road,  near 
Alcott  and  not  far  from  Emerson.  He  called  his 
new  home  The  Wayside,  and  there  he  wrote  the 
"Tanglewood  Tales,"  and  a  brief  biography  of 
Franklin  Pierce,  who  was  a  candidate  for  the  presi 
dency.  On  his  election,  he  offered  Hawthorne  the 
consulate  at  Liverpool,  which  he  accepted.  The 
next  four  years  were  spent  in  England.  They  were 
not  years  of  unmixed  happiness,  for  the  publicity 
attendant  upon  the  discharge  of  his  official  duties 
was  exceedingly  painful  to  Hawthorne. 

"  What  would  a  man  do  if  he  were  compelled  to 
live  always  in  the  sultry  heat  of  society  and  could 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  187 

not  bathe  himself  in  cool  solitude?"  he  once  asked. 
If  he  were  a  man  of  Hawthorne's  temperament,  he 
would  do  as  Hawthorne  did,  —  protect  himself  from 
the  sultry  heat  by  the  assumption  of  another  char 
acter,  faultlessly  automatic  and  regular  in  its  dis 
charge  of  social  functions,  but  giving  no  hint  of  the 
real,  living  man  beneath  it.  In  the  chapter  on  civic 
banquets  in  "  Our  Old  Home,"  Hawthorne  gives  a 
frank  confession  of  his  feelings  at  the  delivery  of  an 
after-dinner  speech,  saying  that  he  could  speak  of  it 
quite  as  indifferently  as  if  it  were  the  experience  of 
another  person,  because  it  was  not  he,  in  his  own 
proper  and  natural  self,  that  sat  there  at  table,  or 
subsequently  rose  to  speak,  and  that  if  the  choice 
had  been  offered  him  whether  the  mayor  should  let 
off  a  speech  at  his  head  or  a  pistol,  he  would  unhesi 
tatingly  have  taken  the  latter  alternative. 

There  is  probably  little  exaggeration  in  this  state 
ment.  Never  was  an  organization  more  sensitive,  or 
more  correct  in  its  intuitions  than  Hawthorne's.  It 
was  as  if  a  sixth  sense  had  been  given  him  by  which 
he  divined  at  once  the  spiritual  nature  of  all  with 
whom  he  came  into  contact,  and  if  that  nature  had 
nothing  in  common  with  his  own,  it  thrilled  no  fibre, 
awoke  no  music  in  him.  He  became  mute  and  cold  as 
the  strings  of  an  untouched  harp.  This  muteness  was 
often  mistaken  for  an  effect  of  ordinary  diffidence, 
but  it  was  not;  it  was  the  muteness  of  an  untouched 
chord.  Speaking  of  an  interview  with  Miss  Bremer, 
with  whom  he  could  not  get  on  in  conversation,  he 
says  :  "  There  must  first  be  close  and  unembarrassed 
contiguity  with  my  companion,  or  I  cannot  say  one 
real  word.  I  doubt  whether  I  have  really  talked  with 


1 88     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

half-a-dozen  persons  in  my  life,  either  man  or  woman." 
This  peculiarity  made  at  once  the  strength  and  the 
limitations  of  Hawthorne's  genius.  It  gave  him  un 
rivaled  analytical  power.  The  mysteries  of  the 
human  heart,  its  agonizing  struggles  in  the  grasp  of 
sin,  the  desolate  bitterness  of  loneliness,  the  withering 
of  the  soul  in  the  fierce  heat  of  a  master-passion,  he 
depicts  with  incomparable  power  and  naked  truthful 
ness.  But  the  sunshine  of  life  does  not  lighten  his 
pages ;  only  its  pale  moonlight  gleams  and  its  shad 
ows  are  there.  "  I  wish  God  had  given  me  the  faculty 
of  writing  a  sunshiny  book,"  he  says  in  his  journal, 
just  before  writing  his  last  romance.  But  the  faculty 
was  denied  him.  What  he  somewhere  calls  the 
"  white  sunshine  of  actual  life  "  dazzled  and  bewil 
dered  him.  Over  all  he  wrote  hangs  the  shadow  of 
a  vague  yet  profound  melancholy.  His  books  give 
as  much  pain  as  pleasure,  and  only  the  stern  whole 
some  moral  underlying  them  all  relieves  them  from 
the  charge  of  being  morbid.  Hawthorne's  genius  was 
unquestionably  of  the  highest  order,  but  it  was  lim 
ited  in  its  range.  Real  life  lay  all  about  him,  offering 
him  subjects  for  study,  but  he  had  not  the  hearty 
assimilative  power  of  those  great  creative  geniuses 
who  seize  upon  the  present  and  transform  it.  Deeply 
rooted  in  Puritan  soil,  drawing  his  sustenance  from  it, 
he  returns  again  and  again  to  the  past  for  material 
for  his  work.  But  he  has  revivified  that  past ;  he  has 
made  of  it  an  immortal  picture  gallery,  with  New 
England  for  a  background. 

Hawthorne  resigned  the  Liverpool  consulate  in 
1857,  anQl  tne  following  year  went  on  the  Continent, 
where  he  spent  most  of  his  time  in  Italy.  His  resi- 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  189 

dence  in  Italy  furnished  him  with  suggestions  for  a 
new  romance,  which  he  published  in  1860  under  the 
title  of  "  The  Marble  Faun."  In  the  same  year  he 
returned  to  America,  and  settled  for  the  remainder  of 
his  life  in  Concord,  at  his  old  home  the  Wayside. 
The  Wayside  is  an  unpretentious  frame  cottage, 
painted  dark  yellow.  On  the  top  of  the  roof  Haw 
thorne  built  for  his  study  a  rather  ungainly-looking 
square  room,  called  by  courtesy  "  the  tower."  The 
tower  was  entered  by  a  trap-door,  upon  which  Haw 
thorne  placed  his  chair,  when  writing,  to  secure  himself 
from  interruption.  The  cottage  is  beautifully  located 
at  the  foot  of  a  steep,  long  hill  thickly  grown  with  hem 
locks  and  pines.  On  the  crest  of  this  hill,  among  the 
sweet-fern  and  brambles,  under  the  gloomy  shade  of 
the  pines,  Hawthorne  was  accustomed  to  take  his  soli 
tary  walks  while  he  brooded  over  his  last  romance. 
Mrs.  Hawthorne  called  this  hill  his  Mount  of  Vision. 

Thoreau  had  told  Hawthorne  of  a  tradition  con 
cerning  a  former  occupant  of  the  Wayside,  a  man 
who  thought  he  could  never  die.  Hawthorne  seized 
upon  this  idea  as  the  theme  of  his  last-planned 
romance,  "  Septimius  Felton,"  later  worked  out  in 
the  unfinished  "  Dolliver  Romance."  It  is  the  story 
of  an  old  doctor  who  had  a  bottle  of  the  elixir  of  life ; 
but  there  is  little  in  the  fragment  left  us  to  indicate 
that  it  would  have  equalled  Hawthorne's  earlier 
romances.  Before  its  conclusion,  the  great  author 
was  dead.  He  had  been  in  failing  health  for  some 
time,  and  in  May,  1864,  he  was  induced  to  take  a  car 
riage  journey  through  southern  New  Hampshire  with 
his  old  friend,  ex-President  Franklin  Pierce.  It  was 
hoped  that  the  rest  and  change  would  bring  back 


190     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

something  of  his  old  vigor;  but  he  died  on  the  nine 
teenth  of  May  at  a  hotel  in  Plymouth,  New  Hamp 
shire,  and  four  days  later  was  buried  in  Sleepy  Hollow 
Cemetery,  Concord.  A  low,  plain  marble  headstone, 
with  the  one  word  HAWTHORNE  carved  upon  it,  marks 
his  grave.  The  wife  whom  he  loved  so  tenderly,  and 
who  returned  his  love  with  equal  devotion  and  ten 
derness,  died  in  London  some  years  later,  and  was 
buried  in  Kensal  Green  Cemetery. 

Hawthorne  had  requested  that  no  biography  of  him 
should  be  written;  but  the  successive  publication  of 
his  note-books,  and  later  the  publication  of  a  biog 
raphy  by  his  son  Julian,  entitled  "  Nathaniel  Haw 
thorne  and  his  Wife,"  have  furnished  us  with  more 
satisfactory  biographical  material  than  we  possess  of 
any  other  American  author.  The  tall,  robust  frame ; 
the  large,  finely  shaped  head  with  its  thick,  dark- 
brown  hair;  the  handsome  face  with  its  keen  gray 
eyes  and  sensitive  mouth  shaded  by  a  heavy  mus 
tache,  are  more  familiar  to  the  mind's  eye  of  his 
present  readers  than  they  were  to  the  bodily  eyes  of 
his  neighbors.  The  cloudy  veil  which,  he  said, 
stretched  across  the  abyss  of  his  nature,  though  he 
had  no  love  of  secrecy  and  darkness,  is  thinner  to  our 
eyes  than  it  was  to  theirs,  and  we  look  into  a  heart 
in  which  there  was  no  guile,  only  an  unutterable  long 
ing  for  the  beautiful,  and  an  inextinguishable  desire 
to  express  it. 

Alcott  says,  in  his  reminiscences  entitled  "  Concord 
Days,"  that  during  all  the  years  Hawthorne  lived 
beside  him,  he  rarely  caught  sight  of  him.  Emerson 
has  a  like  report  to  give;  Cabot,  Emerson's  biog 
rapher,  says  that  Emerson  and  Hawthorne  liked 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne 


191 


each  other  personally,  but  that  they  were  very  unlike 
in  nature,  and  of  an  unlikeness  that  had  no  mutual 
attraction.  They  "  interdespised  "  each  other's  moon 
shine,  as  very  amiable  and  pretty  but  childish.  When 
Hawthorne  died,  Emerson  wrote  :  — 

"1  thought  there  was  a  tragic  element  in  the  event  that 
might  be  more  fully  rendered  in  the  painful  solitude  of  the 
man  ;  which,  I  suppose,  could  not  longer  be  endured,  and  he 
died  of  it.  I  found  in  his  death  a  surprise  and  a  disappoint 
ment.  I  thought  him  a  greater  man  than  any  of  his  words 
betray :  there  was  still  a  great  deal  of  work  in  him,  and  he 
might  one  day  show  a  purer  power.  ...  It  was  easy  to  talk 
with  him,  there  were  no  barriers,  only  he  said  so  little  that  I 
talked  too  much,  and  stopped  only  because,  as  he  gave  no 
indications,  I  feared  to  exceed.  He  showed  no  egotism,  no 
self-assertion,  rather  a  humility,  and  at  one  time  a  fear  that  he 
had  written  himself  out.  ...  I  do  not  think  any  of  his  books 
worthy  of  his  genius.  I  admired  the  man,  who  was  simple, 
amiable,  truth-loving,  and  frank  in  conversation,  but  I  never 
read  his  books  with  pleasure  :  they  are  too  young." 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Hawthorne's  unerring 
intuition  divined  this  secret  disapproval  in  Emerson, 
and  moreover  divined  the  reason  of  it  in  a  constitu 
tional  difference  of  thought  and  feeling  that  made  a 
full,  free,  and  affectionate  friendship  between  them 
impossible.  Emerson  demanded  of  men  an  intellec 
tual  stimulus.  The  fire  in  him  could  best  flash  out 
in  a  flint-like  collision  of  mind  with  mind.  For  any 
other  contact  with  men,  he  cared  little  or  nothing  at 
all.  It  was  the  teacher  among  them  he  sought,  not 
the  comrade.  Hawthorne,  on  the  contrary,  belonged 
to  that  order  of  sensitive  geniuses  in  whom  the 
feminine  need  of  loving  and  being  loved  is  a  marked 


192    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

characteristic.  Quick,  warm  sympathy,  loving  appre 
ciation  and  responsiveness,  were  as  necessary  to  the 
full  and  happy  development  of  his  powers,  as  warm 
sunshine  and  refreshing  rains  are  essential  to  the 
blooming  of  plants.  "  He  was  feminine,"  said  his 
friend  Hillard,  "  in  his  quick  perception,  his  fine  in 
sight,  his  sensibility  to  beauty."  Nothing  can  be 
more  certain  than  that  his  marriage  with  a  woman  of 
artistic  temperament  and  warm  human  sympathy 
mellowed  and  ripened  his  genius,  and  saved  him  to 
the  world  as  a  great  artist.  She  strengthened  his 
trust  in  himself:  she  never  questioned  the  majesty 
and  beauty  of  that  ideal  world  in  which  he  lived; 
she  brought  him  a  large,  childlike  faith,  and  a  pas 
sionate  womanly  devotion  that  answered  the  needs  of 
his  heart.  With  women  of  such  a  temperament 
Hawthorne  was  always  at  his  best,  and  conversed  with 
nothing  of  that  reserve  and  caution  that  characterized 
his  intercourse  with  men.  In  his  Italian  note-book 
he  records  the  pleasure  he  felt  in  the  society  of 
Mrs.  Browning,  because  of  her  quick  sympathy  and 
responsiveness. 

This  peculiarity  of  Hawthorne's  temperament,  as 
sociated  with  the  circumstances  of  his  early  life,  ex 
plains  the  morbid,  introspective  character  of  much  of 
his  early  work.  The  man  of  adamant,  turned  to  stone 
from  his  refusal  to  open  his  heart  to  the  beneficent 
influences  of  love  to  his  fellow-men ;  Ethan  Brand, 
who  went  in  search  of  the  unpardonable  sin,  and 
found  it  to  be  "  the  sin  of  an  intellect  that  triumphed 
over  the  sense  of  brotherhood  with  man  and  reverence 
for  God,  and  sacrificed  everything  to  its  own  mighty 
chains ;  "  the  artist  of  the  beautiful,  to  whom  had 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne 

often  come  "  a  sensation  of  moral  cold  that  makes 
the  spirit  shiver  as  if  it  had  reached  the  frozen  soli 
tudes  of  the  pole ; "  the  man  at  the  Christmas 
banquet  with  his  heavy  brow  bent  downward,  natur 
ally  earnest  and  impassioned,  feeling  himself  the 
bearer  of  a  message  to  the  world,  essaying  to  deliver 
it,  but  finding  no  ear  to  listen ;  Osborn,  surrounding 
himself  with  shadows  that  bewilder  him  by  aping 
realities  and  drawing  him  into  a  strange  solitude  in 
the  midst  of  men  where  nobody  wishes  for  what  he 
does,  nor  thinks  and  feels  as  he  does ;  —  all  these 
characters  are  transparent  veils  through  which  Haw 
thorne's  own  despair  and  yearning  are  revealed. 
They  are  the  cries  of  a  chilled  and  sensitive  heart  for 
the  warmth  of  human  love  and  sympathy,  —  the 
cries  of  a  heart  that  makes  its  own  loneliness  through 
an  almost  terrible  fastidiousness.  He  had  all  that 
exquisite  poetic  sensibility  which,  while  it  opens 
regions  of  inexpressible  delight  to  its  possessor,  also 
renders  him  abnormally  susceptible  to  painful  impres 
sions.  Of  this  fastidiousness  Mrs.  Hawthorne  gives 
us  some  inkling  in  her  comments  on  Hawthorne's 
complaints  of  grimy  pictures,  tarnished  frames,  and 
faded  frescos  in  his  French  and  Italian  note-books. 
She  says :  — 

"  They  were  distressing  beyond  measure  to  eyes  that  never 
failed  to  see  anything  with  the  keenest  apprehension,  .  .  . 
and  he  suffered  in  a  way  not  to  be  readily  conceived  from 
any  failure  in  beauty,  physical,  moral,  or  intellectual.  .  .  . 
The  '  New  Jerusalem,  even  like  a  jasper  stone,  clear  as 
crystal, '  *  wherein  shall  in  no  wise  enter  anything  that  defileth, 
neither  that  maketh  abomination  nor  maketh  a  lie/  would 
alone  satisfy  him,  or  rather  not  give  him  actual  pain." 


194    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Another  peculiarity  of  Hawthorne's  intellect  is 
embodied  in  the  constant  reappearance  in  his  works 
of  one  character  under  various  forms;  namely,  the 
analytic  observer,  cool,  self-poised,  profoundly  inter 
ested  in  the  mysteries  of  the  human  heart,  but 
interested  for  the  most  part  through  his  intellect  and 
not  through  his  emotions.  This  character  goes  by 
the  name  of  Miles  Coverdale  in  "  The  Blithedale 
Romance,"  Mr.  Holgrave,  the  daguerreotypist,  in 
"The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables,"  and  Roger 
Chillingworth  in  "  The  Scarlet  Letter."  But  under 
whatever  name  he  reappears,  he  is,  undoubtedly, 
representative  of  that  curious  twist  in  Hawthorne's 
mind  that  made  him  say :  — 

"  The  most  desirable  mode  of  existence  might  be  that  of 
a  spiritualized  Paul  Pry  hovering  invisible  round  man  and 
woman,  witnessing  their  deeds,  searching  their  hearts, 
borrowing  brightness  from  their  felicity  and  shade  from  their 
sorrow,  and  retaining  no  emotion  peculiar  to  himself. " 

One  of  the  most  admirable  examples  of  this 
dramatic  power  to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  another  is 
to  be  found  in  the  "  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse  "  in 
the  wonderfully  lifelike  sketch  entitled  "  The  Old 
Apple-Dealer."  The  subject  seems  at  first  sight  as 
unpromising  as  an  attempt  to  represent  the  soul  of  a 
lamp-post.  But  with  an  exquisite,  almost  super 
human  sympathy,  the  author  depicts  the  "  frost-bitten, 
patient  despondency"  of  the  little  withered  old  man, 
until  the  reader  puts  aside  the  sketch  with  a  lump  in 
his  throat,  an  ache  in  his  heart,  and  a  new  and  vivid 
consciousness  of  the  tie  that  unites  us  all  to  the  very 
humblest  and  meanest  of  our  kind.  The  power  to 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  195 

awaken  this  consciousness  belongs  to  the  highest 
order  of  art.  The  French  moralist,  Joubert,  speaking 
of  the  fiction  of  his  day,  says :  "  Viewed  from  the 
standpoint  of  art,  the  problem  of  the  romance  is  to 
paint  a  flame ;  and  it  is  the  fireplace  that  is  painted 
instead."  All  fiction  that  depends  upon  external 
accessories,  mere  show  and  movement,  to  interest  the 
reader,  instead  of  relying  upon  the  growth  of  thought 
and  feeling  and  the  development  of  character,  falls 
short  of  the  highest  art.  Hawthorne  is  eminently  a 
psychologist.  It  is  not  the  deed  but  the  motive  or 
impulse  behind  it,  and  the  condition  of  mind  that 
follows  it,  that  sets  his  fancy  astir. 

Therefore  his  work  answers  the  highest  demand 
that  can  be  made  of  it :  it  paints  the  flame,  not  the 
fireplace.  Bare  of  incident,  it  is  crowded  with  the 
life  of  the  soul.  Dealing  with  the  mysteries  of  sin 
and  guilt,  it  preserves  an  austere  purity.  Concern 
ing  itself  with  those  problems  in  human  life  that 
breed  despair  and  pessimism,  it  is  tainted  with  no 
morbid  wailing,  but  breathes  a  manly  spirit  of  trust 
and  resignation.  "  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  is  the  most 
dramatic  and  most  richly  colored  of  Hawthorne's 
longer  works,  and  these  qualities  have  made  it  the 
most  popular  of  his  romances.  But  in  acuteness  and 
delicacy  of  analytic  power,  in  variety  and  naturalness 
of  character  drawing,  in  the  skilful  blending  of  the 
lights  and  shades  of  humor  and  pathos,  it  is  sur 
passed  by  "The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables."  "To 
see  clearly,"  says  Herbert  Spencer,  "  how  a  right 
or  wrong  act  generates  consequences,  internal  and 
external,  that  go  on  branching  out  more  widely  as 
years  progress,  requires  a  rare  power  of  analysis." 


196    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  "  rests  upon  such  a 
theme,  that  had  long  haunted  Hawthorne's  imagina 
tion  in  the  story  of  that  Puritan  ancestor  who  had 
persecuted  and  wronged  the  Quakers.  There  are 
few  characters  in  the  story,  and  no  extraordinary 
incidents.  Its  whole  power,  and  it  is  a  rare  and 
wonderful  power,  centres  in  the  analysis  of  character 
and  emotion.  And  never  was  analysis  more  search 
ing  or  more  faithful.  Never  were  the  quivering, 
sensitive  nerves  of  a  shy,  proud,  fond  woman's  nature 
laid  bare  to  human  view  with  sharper  distinctness 
than  those  of  poor  old  Hepzibah  Pyncheon.  "  The 
Blithedale  Romance,"  which  Emerson  calls  a  dis 
agreeable  story,  failing  to  do  justice  to  the  Brook 
Farm  experiment,  embodies  Hawthorne's  views  on 
the  perfectibility  of  human  society.  The  cold-hearted, 
selfish  Hollingsworth,  with  his  philanthropic  dream 
of  reforming  criminals  by  appealing  to  their  better 
instincts;  the  restless,  nervous,  brilliant  Zenobia, 
eager  to  lose  herself  in  some  absorbing  passion,  or 
larger  life  that  would  tax  all  her  faculties ;  the  poor 
waif,  Priscilla ;  the  analytic  observer,  Miles  Coverdale, 
—  were  certainly,  as  Hawthorne  emphatically  protests, 
not  drawn  after  the  life,  but  they  are  lifelike  types 
of  human  character.  Many  a  profound  problem  of 
human  life  is  worked  out  in  this  brilliant  romance  for 
those  who  have  understanding  to  follow  its  analysis. 
It  was  a  great  favorite  with  the  poet  Browning.  In 
"  The  Marble  Faun "  Hawthorne  approaches  once 
more  the  old  mystery  of  human  sin,  and  works  out 
his  solution  of  it,  in  the  awakening  of  the  intellectual 
life  in  Donatello. 

Besides  being  a  great  psychologist,  a  great  writer 


Nathaniel  Hawthorne  197 

of  fiction,  Hawthorne  was  a  master  of  style.  His 
language,  while  reflecting  the  rich  glow  of  his  imagi 
nation,  is  at  all  times  pure  and  simple.  It  lends  it 
self  to  his  subtlest  or  boldest  thought  with  exquisite 
delicacy  and  chasteness.  He  once  wrote  his  pub 
lisher  that  he  was  never  good  for  anything  till  after 
the  first  autumnal  frost,  which  had  somewhat  the 
same  effect  on  his  imagination  that  it  had  upon  the 
foliage  about  him,  multiplying  and  brightening  its 
hues.  Something  of  this  rich,  warm,  autumnal  hue 
tinges  his  style,  and  gives  to  the  reader  a  pleasure  of 
its  own,  independent  of  his  subject  matter.  America 
has  not  as  yet  produced  his  equal  in  genius  nor  in 
finished  artistic  skill. 


CHAPTER  X 

HENRY   WADSWORTH   LONGFELLOW    (1807-1882) 

TN  his  essay  on  the  poet,  Emerson  says:  — 

"  I  took  part  in  conversation  the  other  day,  concerning 
a  recent  writer  of  lyrics,  a  man  of  subtle  mind,  whose  head 
appeared  to  be  a  music-box  of  delicate  tunes  and  rhythms, 
and  whose  skill  and  command  of  language  we  could  not 
sufficiently  praise.  But  when  the  question  arose  whether  he 
was  not  only  a  lyrist  but  a  poet,  we  were  obliged  to  confess 
that  he  is  plainly  a  contemporary,  not  an  eternal  man.  He 
does  not  stand  out  of  our  low  limitations,  like  a  Chimbo- 
razo  under  the  line,  running  up  from  a  torrid  base  through 
all  the  climates  of  the  globe  with  belts  of  the  herbage  of  every 
latitude  on  its  high  mottled  sides  ;  but  this  genius  is  the  land 
scape  garden  of  a  modern  house,  adorned  with  fountains  and 
statues,  with  well-bred  men  and  women  sitting  and  standing 
in  the  walks  and  terraces.  We  hear  through  all  the  varied 
music  the  ground  tone  of  conventional  life.  Our  poets  are 
men  of  talent  who  sing,  and  not  the  children  of  music.  The 
argument  is  secondary.  The  finish  of  the  verse  is  primary." 

It  is  impossible  to  state  with  absolute  certainty  who 
was  the  particular  poet  of  whom  Emerson  spoke  in 
this  recorded  conversation;  but  it  is  very  probable 
that  it  was  Longfellow,  because  of  no  other  American 
poet  can  this  admirable  criticism  be  more  aptly  made. 
Longfellow,  though  the  most  popular  of  American 
poets,  does  not  rank  with  the  great  singers  of  the 


Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow  199 

human  race.  The  poetic  flame  that  glowed  in  him 
was  not  native  and  original  like  that  which  burst  from 
the  volcanic  breast  of  the  mighty  world  poets.  It 
was  a  decent,  well-controlled  fireside  flame  that  owed 
its  existence  to  other  than  spontaneous  sources.  But 
the  fireside  flame  has  its  meaning  as  well  as  the  inex 
tinguishable  fires  of  nature.  Sweet  and  tender  asso 
ciations  cluster  round  it.  The  gentler  affections,  the 
joys  and  griefs  of  home,  crowd  into  the  memory  when 
we  name  it,  and  these  are  the  themes  of  Longfellow's 
verse.  This  is  why  he  is  so  aptly  called  the  "  House 
hold  Poet."  So  little  of  the  turbulent  appears  in  his 
poetry,  so  smoothly  does  it  reflect  his  own  gentle 
character,  that  he  might  have  sung  to  his  genius  in 
his  youth  what  he  sang  to  his  heart :  — 

"  Stay,  stay  at  home,  my  heart,  and  rest. 
Home-keeping  hearts  are  happiest ; 
For  those  that  wander  they  know  not  where 
Are  full  of  trouble  and  full  of  care. 
To  stay  at  home  is  best." 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow  was  born  in  Port 
land,  Maine,  on  the  twenty-seventh  of  February,  1807. 
His  mother,  Zilpah  Wadsworth,  was  a  descendant 
of  John  Alden  and  Priscilla  Mullens.  His  father, 
Stephen  Longfellow,  was  an  able  lawyer  and  suc 
cessful  politician  who  at  one  time  represented  his 
district  in  Congress.  Longfellow  entered  Bowdoin 
College  in  his  fifteenth  year.  He  was  a  sunny-natured, 
practical,  and  sensible  youth,  who  loved  his  books, 
but  loved  good  health  better,  and  finding  exercise 
necessary  to  it,  took  long  walks  when  walking  was 
practicable,  cut  wood  when  it  was  n't,  or  boxed  with 


2oo    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

an  imaginary  pugilist  chalked  out  on  his  closet  door. 
"  I  have  very  resolutely  concluded,"  he  writes  to  his 
father,  in  his  seventeenth  year,  "to  enjoy  myself 
heartily  wherever  I  am.  I  find  it  most  profitable  to 
form  such  plans  as  are  least  liable  to  failure."  One 
of  these  plans  was  a  determination  to  fit  himself  for 
literature.  "  Somehow,"  he  confides  to  a  friend  in 
1824,  "  and  yet  I  hardly  know  why,  I  am  unwilling  to 
study  any  profession.  I  cannot  make  a  lawyer  of 
any  eminence,  because  I  have  not  a  talent  for  argu 
ment.  I  am  not  good  enough  for  a  minister,  and  as 
to  physic,  I  utterly  and  absolutely  detest  it."  About 
the  same  time  he  wrote  his  father  that  he  wished  to 
spend  a  year  at  Cambridge  in  order  to  read  history 
and  learn  Italian,  as  after  leaving  Cambridge  he 
designed  to  attach  himself  to  some  periodical  and 
live  by  writing.  In  urging  this  project  upon  his 
father,  he  writes  confidently,  "  I  will  be  eminent  in 
something."  However,  the  autumn  and  winter  after 
his  graduation  were  spent  in  his  father's  law-office 
reading  Blackstone.  But  this  same  year  a  professor 
ship  of  modern  languages  was  established  at  Bowdoin ; 
and  Longfellow,  whose  translations  from  Horace  and 
original  literary  work  had  attracted  the  attention  of 
one  of  the  trustees,  was  offered  the  position  with  a 
proposal  that  he  should  visit  Europe  to  prepare  for 
his  work. 

The  proposal  was  eagerly  accepted,  and  on  the 
fifteenth  of  May,  1826,  Longfellow  sailed  for  Europe 
to  be  gone  three  years.  He  settled  first  at  Paris,  where 
he  spent  eight  months,  enlivening  his  French  studies 
by  little  pedestrian  journeys  to  the  neighboring 
country  and  towns.  We  have  a  pleasant  record  of 


Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow  201 

these  journeys  in  his  published  "  Life  and  Letters," 
but  the  record  is  chiefly  interesting  as  a  revelation  of 
Longfellow's  dependence  at  this  time  upon  precon 
ceived  ideas  for  his  inspiration.  Nature  does  not 
appeal  to  him  at  first  hand,  but  through  what  he 
has  read  about  her.  In  a  pedestrian  journey  to 
Tours,  for  example,  he  overtakes  a  band  of  village- 
girls  on  their  way  home,  and  he  joins  the  party.  He 
says :  — 

"  I  wanted  to  get  into  one  of  the  cottages,  if  possible,  to 
study  character.  I  had  a  flute  in  my  knapsack,  and  I 
thought  it  would  be  very  pretty  to  touch  up  at  a  cottage- 
door,  Goldsmith-like,  though  I  would  not  have  done  it  for 
the  world  without  an  invitation.  Well,  before  long,  I  deter 
mined  to  get  an  invitation  if  possible,  so  I  addressed  the  girl 
who  was  walking  beside  me,  told  her  I  had  a  flute  in  my 
sack,  and  asked  her  if  she  would  like  to  dance.  Now,  laugh 
long  and  loud  !  What  do  you  suppose  she  answered  ?  She 
said  she  liked  to  dance,  but  did  not  know  what  a  flute  was. 
What  havoc  that  made  among  my  romantic  ideas !  My 
quietus  was  made.  I  said  no  more  about  a  flute  the  whole 
journey  through,  and  I  thought  nothing  but  starvation  would 
drive  me  to  strike  up  at  the  entrance  of  a  village  door  as 
Goldsmith  did.  The  company  I  was  with  conducted  me  to 
the  village  of  Tivher,  the  most  beautiful  and  romantic  village 
I  was  ever  in.  I  found  the  village  inn,  and  fell  asleep  at 
night  with  the  thought  that  perhaps  a  great  part  of  '  The 
Traveller'  was  written  in  that  very  village." 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  it  could  never  have  been 
written  there,  nor  anywhere  else,  had  Goldsmith,  like 
Longfellow,  looked  upon  a  band  of  young  girls  as  if 
they  were  puppets  in  a  romantic  theatre,  instead  of 
feeling  himself  a  real  flesh-and-blood  peasant  among 


202    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

them,  in  that  generous  overflow  of  youthful  spirits 
and  hearty  comradeship  that  annihilates  caste.  It 
is  this  thinking  and  seeing  at  second  hand  that  robs 
Longfellow's  youthful  letters  and  journal  of  buoyancy 
and  sparkle,  and  gives  to  them,  in  spite  of  their  roman 
tic  tinge,  a  certain  insipid,  almost  leaden,  staidness. 

From  Paris,  for  which  he  cared  little,  Longfellow 
went  to  Spain  and  took  up  his  residence  in  Madrid. 
He  had  seen  no  city  in  Europe,  he  said,  that  pleased 
him  so  much  as  Madrid.  He  had  also  the  good 
fortune  to  meet  Washington  Irving  in  Spain.  After 
a  stay  of  eight  months  he  left  Spain  for  Italy,  where 
he  remained  a  year ;  but  Italy  excited  no  enthusiasm 
in  him.  He  was,  he  said,  "  homesick  for  Spain.  The 
recollection  of  it  completely  ruins  Italy  for  me." 

In  the  midwinter  of  1828  he  received  a  letter  from 
home  saying  that  the  Bowdoin  professorship  offered 
him  had  been  withdrawn  on  the  score  of  his  being 
too  young,  and  that  a  tutorship  was  tendered  him 
instead.  He  wrote  back  proudly  to  his  father :  — 

"  They  say  I  am  too  young.  Were  they  not  aware  of  that 
three  years  ago?  If  I  am  not  capable  of  performing  the 
duties  of  the  office,  they  may  be  very  sure  of  my  not  accepting 
it.  I  know  not  in  what  light  they  may  look  upon  it,  but  for 
my  own  part,  I  do  not  in  the  least  regard  it  as  a  favor  con 
ferred  upon  me.  It  is  no  sinecure,  and  if  my  services  are  an 
equivalent  for  my  salary,  there  is  no  favor  done  me  :  if  they 
be  not,  I  do  not  deserve  the  situation." 

From  Italy,  Longfellow  went  to  Dresden,  and  began 
the  study  of  German,  which  he  continued  at  Gottingen. 
From  there,  he  took  a  run  over  to  England  and  back 
to  Germany  by  way  of  Holland.  In  the  fall  of  1829, 


Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow          203 

as  he  had  declined  the  tutorship,  the  Bowdoin  trus 
tees  voted  him  the  professorship  at  a  salary  of  eight 
hundred  dollars,  with  an  addition  of  one  hundred 
dollars  as  librarian. 

He  was  twenty-two  when  he  commenced  his  pro 
fessional  duties.  He  was  an  earnest,  sympathetic, 
cordial  teacher,  and  in  these  early  years  he  was 
delighted  with  his  work.  He  published  some  text 
books  for  the  use  of  his  pupils,  translated  Spanish 
poetry,  and  led  what  he  called  "  a  very  sober  jog-trot 
kind  of  life."  He  began  contributing  to  the  "  North 
American  Review"  in  1831.  In  September  of  the 
same  year  he  married  Mary  Potter,  a  beautiful  girl, 
of  Portland,  Maine. 

His  first  book,  a  translation  from  the  Spanish,  a 
small  volume  of  fewer  than  one  hundred  pages,  was 
published  in  1833.  It  was  followed  in  the  same 
year  by  a  volume  of  prose  entitled  "  Outre  Mer." 
The  book  is  filled  with  the  impressions  of  a  joyous 
young  traveller  to  whom  the  land  beyond  the  sea 
is  a  kind  of  holy  land,  —  a  land  of  immortal  mem 
ories.  The  reminiscences  of  famous  places  are  inter 
spersed  with  graceful  tales,  and,  on  the  whole,  "  Outre 
Mer"  is  decidedly  the  pleasantest  of  Longfellow's 
prose  works. 

In  1834,  on  the  resignation  of  George  Ticknor, 
Josiah  Quincy  tendered  Longfellow  the  professorship 
of  modern  languages  at  Harvard,  with  a  salary  of 
fifteen  hundred  dollars  a  year,  and  a  residence  in 
Cambridge  required.  He  was  permitted  to  spend  a 
year  or  eighteen  months  in  Germany  at  his  own 
expense,  if  he  liked.  He  sailed  for  Europe  in  the 
spring  of  1835,  spent  three  weeks  in  London,  where 


204    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

he  met  Carlyle,  sailed  for  Hamburg  and  thence  to 
Copenhagen  and  Stockholm.  Settling  in  Stockholm, 
he  began  the  study  of  Swedish  and  Danish,  and  later 
took  up  Dutch  in  Amsterdam.  In  this  city  his  wife 
fell  ill.  She  recovered  sufficiently  to  remove  to 
Rotterdam,  but  suffered  a  relapse  and  died  there. 

Longfellow  then  went  to  Heidelberg,  where  he  met 
for  the  first  time  the  poet  Bryant.  He  travelled  in 
Tyrol  and  Switzerland,  and  on  the  wall  of  a  little 
chapel  at  St.  Gilgen  he  read  the  inscription  which 
he  afterward  made  the  motto  of  "  Hyperion  " :  — 

"  Blicke  nicht  trauernd  in  die  Vergangenheit,  sie  kommt 
nicht  wieder.  Niitze  weise  die  Gegenwart,  sie  1st  dein  :  der 
diistern  Zukunft  geh  ohne  Furcht  mit  mannlichen  Sinne 
entgegen." 

The  brave,  manly  spirit  of  these  lines  breathed 
new  hope  and  courage  into  him.  He  no  longer 
allowed  his  grief  to  absorb  him,  but  turned  resolutely 
to  the  accomplishment  of  his  task.  He  went  back  to 
America  in  1836,  and  took  up  his  residence  in  the  old 
Craigie  House  at  Cambridge.  He  writes  to  a  friend 
two  years  later :  — 

"  I  live  in  a  great  house  which  looks  like  an  Italian  villa ; 
have  two  large  rooms  opening  into  each  other.  They  were 
once  General  Washington's  chambers.  I  breakfast  at  seven 
on  tea  and  toast,  and  dine  at  five  or  six,  generally  in  Boston. 
In  the  evening  I  walk  on  the  Common  with  Hillard  or  alone, 
then  go  back  to  Cambridge  on  foot.  If  not  very  late,  I  sit 
an  hour  with  Felton  or  Sparks.  For  nearly  two  years  I  have 
not  studied  at  night,  save  now  and  then.  Most  of  the  time  I 
am  alone.  I  smoke  a  good  deal,  wear  a  broad-brimmed  black 
hat,  black  frock  coat.  .  .  .  Molest  no  one.  Dine  out  fre- 


Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow          205 

quently.  In  winter  go  much  in  Boston  society.  ...  I  do 
not  like  this  sedentary  life.  I  want  action ;  I  want  to  travel. 
Am  too  excited,  too  tumultuous  inwardly,  and  my  health 
suffers  from  all  this." 

There  were  no  street-cars  running  from  Cambridge 
into  Boston  at  that  time,  and  Longfellow's  frequent 
journeys  there  were  made  on  foot.  In  returning 
from  Boston,  he  would  stop  on  the  bridge  that 
crosses  the  Charles  River,  and  watch  the  waters 
rolling  beneath  it.  The  restless  waves  symbolized 
the  restlessness  of  his  own  heart.  Life  was  bringing 
its  lessons  to  him ;  his  thought  was  deepening  and 
broadening;  he  was  learning  to  speak  the  universal 
experiences,  and  that  which  had  satisfied  him  once 
no  longer  answered  his  needs.  He  was  beginning 
to  tire  of  having  his  "  mind  constantly  a  playmate 
for  boys,  constantly  adapting  itself  to  them  instead 
of  stretching  and  grappling  with  men's  minds."  The 
fruit  of  this  unrest  appeared  in  the  publication  in 
1839  of  another  prose  volume,  "  Hyperion,"  and  his 
first  volume  of  original  verse,  "  Voices  of  the  Night." 

Of  the  success  of  "  Hyperion  "  he  was  very  con 
fident,  and  wrote  his  father  that  it  would  take  a  great 
deal  of  persuasion  to  convince  him  that  the  book  was 
not  good.  To  a  friend  he  wrote :  — 

"  The  feelings  of  the  book  are  true ;  the  events  of  the  story 
mostly  fictitious.  The  heroine  bears  a  resemblance  to  the 
lady  without  being  an  exact  portrait.  There  is  no  betrayal 
of  confidence,  no  real  scene  described.  Hyperion  is  the 
name  of  the  book,  not  the  hero.  It  merely  indicates  that  here 
is  the  life  of  one  who  in  feeling  and  purposes  is  a  '  son  of 
Heaven  and  Earth,'  and  who,  though  obscured  by  clouds,  yet 


206     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

1  moves  on  high.'  Further  than  this,  the  name  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  book  and,  in  fact,  is  mentioned  only  once  in 
the  course  of  it." 

Of  the  success  of  "  Voices  of  the  Night  "  the  author 
was  equally  confident,  and  it  did  succeed ;  at  the  end 
of  a  fortnight  only  forty  copies  were  left  out  of  an 
edition  of  nine  hundred.  "  Hyperion "  is  not  so 
fresh  and  healthy  a  book  as  "  Outre  Mer."  The 
joyous  young  traveller  of  the  latter  work  has  become 
a  melancholy  dreamer  in  "  Hyperion,"  and  the  senti 
ment  has,  in  great  part,  become  a  kind  of  wan,  sickly 
sentimentalism.  But  the  collection  of  poems  "  Voices 
of  the  Night"  contained  many  of  those  poems  that 
have  since  become  household  favorites,  —  "  The  Psalm 
of  Life,"  "  Footsteps  of  Angels,"  "  The  Beleaguered 
City,"  "The  Reaper  and  the  Flowers."  Another 
volume  of  verse,  "  Ballads  and  Other  Poems,"  ap 
peared  in  1841,  and  still  further  increased  the  poet's 
reputation. 

With  his  success  with  the  public,  the  literary  man 
gained  the  ascendency,  and  the  professor  began  to 
decline ;  university  life  grew  intolerable  to  him.  "  I 
will  not  consent  to  have  my  life  crushed  out  of  me 
so.  I  had  rather  live  awhile  on  bread  and  water,"  he 
writes  to  his  father.  His  eyes  began  to  trouble  him, 
his  health  failed.  He  secured  a  leave  of  absence  for 
six  months  in  1842,  went  abroad  again  and  took  the 
water-cure  at  Marienberg.  On  his  return  to  America 
he  was  married,  in  the  summer  of  1843,  to  Frances  E. 
Appleton,  whom  he  had  first  met  in  Switzerland  six 
years  before.  At  the  time  of  their  meeting  she  was 
a  lovely  girl  of  nineteen,  the  Mary  Ashburton  of 
"  Hyperion."  Mr.  Appleton,  the  father  of  the  bride, 


Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow          207 

purchased  Craigie  House  and  presented  it  to  his 
daughter  and  her  husband.  Another  notable  event 
of  1843  was  tne  publication  of  the  drama  of  "  The 
Spanish  Student"  and  a  little  volume  of  poems  on 
slavery. 

Longfellow's  masterpiece,  "  Evangeline,"  was  pub 
lished  in  1847.  It  had  been  begun  two  years  before 
under  the  title  of  "  Gabrielle."  It  is  a  pathetic  ren 
dering  in  hexameter  verse  of  an  incident  connected 
with  the  exile  of  the  Acadians  in  1755.  The  Acadians 
were  of  French  descent,  and  before  their  exile  occu 
pied  what  is  now  called  Nova  Scotia.  By  the  terms 
of  the  treaty  of  Utrecht  closing  the  war  of  the 
Spanish  Succession  in  1713,  France  lost  to  England 
Newfoundland  and  what  is  now  Canada.  The  Aca 
dians  were  not  inclined  to  acknowledge  the  English 
rule,  and  at  the  outbreak  of  the  fourth  French  and 
Indian  war  in  1754,  they  were  accused  of  secretly 
aiding  their  countrymen  against  the  English.  In 
retaliation,  the  English  seized  their  forts,  laid  waste 
their  villages,  and  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet 
drove  more  than  six  thousand  unhappy  Acadians 
into  English  ships  and  scattered  them  far  from  their 
homes  along  the  Atlantic  coast.  In  this  cruel  exile 
husbands  were  separated  from  their  wives,  parents 
from  their  children,  and  dear  friends  parted  never  to 
meet  again.  Among  those  who  were  separated,  tradi 
tion  speaks  of  a  beautiful  young  girl  and  her  lover 
who,  after  years  of  fruitless  wanderings  in  search  of 
each  other,  met  when  both  were  old  and  one  was 
on  his  death-bed.  "  Evangeline  "  is  the  story  of  the 
separation  and  wanderings  of  these  lovers.  The 
story  is  told  with  exquisite  feeling  and  in  melodious 


208     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

language  which  has  the  rhythm  of  verse  and  the 
perfect  freedom  of  prose.  Its  success  was  instant 
and  unmistakable. 

"  Evangeline  "  was  followed,  in  two  years,  by  a 
prose  tale  called  "  Kavanagh."  It  is  a  feeble  story, 
not  unpleasant  to  read,  but  giving  an  impression  of 
the  author's  inability  to  create  characters  or  incidents 
that  win  the  sympathy  or  excite  the  interest  of  the 
reader.  The  tale  is  evidently  based  on  the  author's 
own  experiences  of  the  difficulty  of  realizing  literary 
ambitions  in  the  face  of  professional  duties  and  claims 
upon  his  sympathy  and  time.  While  writing  "  Evan 
geline,"  he  makes  this  entry  in  his  journal :  — 

"  I  am  in  despair  at  the  swift  flight  of  time  and  the  utter 
impossibility  I  feel  to  lay  hold  upon  anything  permanent.  All 
my  hours  and  days  go  to  perishable  things.  College  takes 
half  the  time,  and  other  people  with  their  interminable  letters 
and  poems  and  requests  and  demands  take  the  rest.  I  have 
hardly  a  moment  to  think  of  my  own  writings  and  am 
cheated  of  some  of  life's  fairest  hours.  This  is  the  extreme 
of  folly,  and  if  I  knew  a  man  far  off  in  some  foreign  land 
doing  as  I  do  here,  I  should  say  he  was  mad." 

In  this  entry  we  have  the  germ  of  "  Kavanagh ;  " 
and  Mr.  Churchill,  the  schoolmaster,  the  "  dreamy 
poetic  man,"  and  not  Kavanagh,  the  clergyman,  for 
whom  the  book  is  named,  is  the  real  hero.  Mr. 
Churchill,  who  ardently  longs  to  write  a  romance, 
continually  defers  beginning  his  task,  because  of  the 
importunate  claims  of  the  moment.  It  is  always  the 
coming  hour  that  is  to  find  him  resolutely  at  work, 
but  the  hour  brings  its  duty  or  its  exaction,  and  the 
task  is  once  more  set  aside.  A  slight  thread  of  a 


Henry  Wads  worth  Longfellow          209 

love  story  —  the  love  of  two  young  girls  for  the 
minister  —  is  interwoven.  The  minister's  wooing  and 
winning  of  one  of  them  and  the  death  of  the  other 
serves  to  show  that  Churchill  had  under  his  eyes,  at 
his  very  feet,  the  material  for  an  immortal  romance, 
had  he  but  possessed  seeing  eyes  and  the  skill  to  use 
poetically  what  he  saw.  The  story  closes  with  the 
following  quotation,  which  Churchill  thought  "  worthy 
to  be  written  in  letters  of  gold  and  placed  above 
every  door  and  every  house  as  a  warning,  a  sugges 
tion  an  incitement !  "  — 

"  Stay,  stay  the  present  instant ! 
Imprint  the  marks  of  wisdom  on  its  wings  ! 
Oh,  let  it  not  elude  the  grasp,  but  like 
The  good  old  patriarch  upon  record, 
Hold  the  fleet  angel  fast  until  he  bless  thee." 

"  Kavanagh "  has  the  defect  of  all  Longfellow's 
dramatic  and  prose  work,  —  conventional  character 
drawing  and  feeble  sentimentality.  It  bears  the  mark 
of  immaturity  and  ideality,  and  depends  for  what 
attention  it  receives  on  the  reputation  his  poetry  has 
won  for  him. 

The  college  work,  which  he  said  was  like  a  great 
hand  laid  on  all  the  strings  of  his  lyre  stopping  their 
vibrations,  ceased  at  last  in  1854.  The  chair  which 
he  resigned  was  immediately  filled  by  James  Russell 
Lowell,  whose  recently  delivered  lectures  on  the 
English  poets  had  attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention. 
About  the  time  of  his  resignation  the  first  idea  of  an 
Indian  epic  occurred  to  Longfellow.  He  designed  at 
first  to  call  it  Manabozho,  but  later  changed  the  name 
to  Hiawatha.  His  idea  was  to  weave  the  myths  and 
traditions  of  the  Indians  into  a  metrical  narrative. 


2io    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

The  metre  chosen  was  eight-syllable  trochaic,  after  a 
Finnish  epic.  The  poem,  which  he  calls  an  Indian 
Edda,  is  feigned  to  be  sung  by  an  Indian  bard, 
Nawadaha.  The  scene  is  the  southern  shore  of  Lake 
Superior,  between  the  Pictured  Rocks  and  the  great 
sand-dunes.  The  traditions  are,  in  general,  those  of 
the  tribe  called  Ojibways.  Hiawatha  is  the  teacher 
of  the  nations.  He  taught  them  how  to  make  the 
canoe  and  to  cultivate  the  maize;  he  taught  them 
picture-writing  and  the  care  of  the  dead.  He  fought 
with  the  mighty  magician,  the  creator  of  pestilential 
diseases,  fogs,  and  deadly  marsh  exhalations.  The 
woodpecker  told  him  what  vulnerable  spot  to  aim  at, 
and  in  return  for  this  service,  Hiawatha  stained  his 
top-knot  with  blood,  for  which  reason  the  wood 
pecker  wears  to  this  day  a  tuft  of  scarlet  feathers  on 
his  head.  Many  of  the  myths  are  very  pretty;  as, 
for  example,  that  the  rainbow  is  the  flower-garden  of 
heaven,  where  the  wild  flowers  of  the  forest  and  the 
lilies  of  the  prairie  bloom  again  when  they  wither  on 
earth. 

The  story  of  the  maize  is  another  pretty  myth. 
For  three  days  Hiawatha  wrestled  with  a  celestial 
visitor,  and  conquering  him  at  last,  received  the  com 
mand  to  bury  him  under  light,  loose  earth,  and  to  let 
no  ravens  nor  worms  come  at  him.  After  nine  days 
the  green-leafed  tasselled  maize  sprang  from  the 
stranger's  ashes.  Another  pretty  legend  is  that  of 
the  South  Wind's  love  for  the  dandelion  of  the  prairies, 
mistaking  it  for  a  beautiful  maiden  with  yellow  hair. 
The  entire  poem  of  Hiawatha  is  graceful,  but  not  epic. 
All  the  stern,  masculine  Indian  traits  have  been  re 
jected  for  what  is  beautiful  and  poetic.  Though  the 


Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow          211 

imagery  is  carefully  chosen  from  the  simple,  familiar 
objects  of  nature,  the  poem  is  pervaded  by  a  sweet 
ness  and  gentleness,  the  outgrowth  of  years  of  culture, 
that  mark  it  the  performance  of  a  scholarly  poet,  and 
not,  as  feigned,  that  of  a  native  bard.  It  has  no  rude 
Ossianic  vigor.  Hiawatha  and  Minnehaha  are  not 
Indians.  Minnehaha  is  a  Priscilla  in  Indian  costume, 
and  Hiawatha,  for  all  his  magic  gloves  that  rend  the 
rocks  asunder,  and  his  magic  boots  by  which  he 
measures  a  mile  with  every  stride,  is  a  hero  of  our 
own  race  and  century.  The  poem  is  a  forest  idyl ; 
a  poet's  dream  of  the  youth-time  of  a  savage  nation. 
As  a  sweet  and  refreshing  picture  of  life  in  nature 
such  as  Rousseau  might  have  dreamed,  it  gratifies 
the  imagination.  In  its  reproduction  of  some  of  the 
most  poetical  of  Indian  legends,  it  interests  the  under 
standing.  As  an  "  Indian  Edda  "  taken  from  the  lips 
of  a  native  bard,  it  is  the  prettiest  and  most  trans 
parent  of  fictions,  breathing  everywhere  the  gentle 
spirit  of  its  author,  the  fireside  poet  of  America. 

"Hiawatha"  was  published  in  1855,  and  made  a 
sensation  at  once.  It  was  ridiculed  and  parodied,  and 
it  was  extravagantly  admired.  Noted  public  readers 
recited  selections  from  it  on  the  stage.  Steamboats 
were  named  Hiawatha  and  Minnehaha.  It  sold  at  the 
rate  of  three  hundred  copies  a  day.  But  its  author, 
unmoved  by  criticism  or  undue  admiration,  quietly  set 
to  work  on  another  theme,  "  The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish,"  and  in  the  summer  of  1858  he  wrote,  "  I 
have  just- finished  a  poem  of  some  length,  —  an  idyl 
of  the  Old  Colony  Times,  a  bunch  of  Mayflowers  from 
the  Plymouth  woods."  It  would  be  difficult  to  charac 
terize  the  freshness  and  sweetness  of  the  poem  in  fewer 


212    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

or  better  words.  And  now  the  happy  and  busy  life 
of  the  poet  was  soon  to  be  interrupted  by  a  terrible 
and  fatal  accident.  On  the  ninth  of  July  Mrs.  Long 
fellow,  sitting  in  the  library  sealing  with  wax  some 
little  packages  containing  locks  of  her  children's  hair, 
let  fall  a  lighted  match  upon  the  floor.  Her  thin 
summer  dress  caught  fire,  and  she  was  so  badly  burned 
that  she  died  the  next  day.  A  long  silence  fell  upon 
the  poet.  He  had  not  the  art  of  turning  his  grief 
into  words.  But  when  once  more  he  could  master 
quiet  hours,  he  busied  himself  with  the  translation  of 
Dante,  and  published  the  first  series  of  the  "  Tales  of 
a  Wayside  Inn." 

In  1868  he  went  again  to  Europe,  making  a  tour  of 
the  Scottish  Lakes  and  revisiting  Italy.  After  eighteen 
months'  travel,  he  returned  to  America  and  continued 
the  publication  of  the  "  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn " 
in  two  successive  series.  Other  poems  and  ballads 
followed,  some  of  them  not  inferior  to  what  he  had 
written  in  his  youth,  though  none  of  the  more  am 
bitious  works  of  this  period  equalled  "  Evangeline," 
"  Miles  Standish,"  or  "  Hiawatha." 

Longfellow  died  of  peritonitis  on  the  twenty-fourth 
of  March,  1882,  and  was  buried  in  Mt.  Auburn  Cem 
etery.  His  "  Life  and  Letters,"  published  by  his 
brother,  the  Rev.  Samuel  Longfellow,  confirms  the 
impression  which  his  poems  give,  of  a  singularly 
sweet  and  noble  character.  And  to  these  graces 
of  disposition  were  added  the  charm  of  a  fine, 
tall  figure,  a  handsome  head  and  face,  brown  wavy 
hair,  and  frank,  kind  blue  eyes.  George  H.  Hillard 
once  wrote  to  Longfellow,  "  Your  fine  organization 
and  poetical  genius  make  you  a  sort  of  Italy  among 


Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow          213 

human  beings."  And  indeed  there  was  a  sunny 
geniality,  a  sweet,  sympathetic,  companionable  sim 
plicity  in  the  man  that  endeared  him  to  all  who  knew 
him.  From  childhood  he  had  a  hearty  dislike  of 
everything  violent.  When  a  little  boy,  he  used  to  beg 
the  maid  to  fill  his  ears  with  cotton  on  the  Fourth  of 
July,  that  he  might  not  hear  the  roar  of  the  cannon. 
And  in  the  same  spirit,  in  manhood  he  shut  out  of 
his  life  the  bluster  and  tumult  of  political  life,  the 
angry,  envious  noise  of  critical  censure,  and  the  fierce 
blaze  of  consuming  passion.  His  poems  on  slavery 
are  not  indignant  lashes,  but  mournful  pictures  of  the 
pathetic  side  of  slavery.  Even  his  pleasures  were  not 
tumultuous.  "  With  me,"  he  once  said,  "  all  deep 
impressions  are  silent  ones.  I  like  to  live  on  and 
enjoy  them  without  telling  those  around  me  that  I 
do  enjoy  them ;  "  and  again  he  writes  in  his  journal : 
"  Decidedly  the  calm,  dull  husbanding  of  one's  ner 
vous  energies,  though  less  conducive  to  swift  intellec 
tual  effort,  is  more  so  to  happiness.  Let  us  be  calm 
and  happy,  rather  than  excitable  and  nervous-minded." 
And,  as  might  be  expected,  his  journal  is  a  very  quiet 
chronicling  of  ordinary  events,  meetings  with  strangers 
and  friends,  records  of  sunshine  and  storm,  blossom 
ing  trees  and  falling  leaves,  notes  of  books  read  and 
work  planned ;  but  nowhere  is  there  a  quick  flashing 
insight  into  life,  nowhere  a  profound,  brain-stirring 
thought,  nor  an  acute,  far-reaching  criticism  of 
contemporary  literature.  The  calm  cheerfulness 
of  the  record  is  broken  only  here  and  there  by  a 
vague,  half-melancholy  restlessness  and  longing  for 
travel. 

So  serene  and  uniformly  healthy  a  temperament 


214    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

will  guard  its  fortunate  possessor  from  all  excesses, 
and  help  him  to 

"  Make  the  house  where  Gods  may  dwell 
Beautiful,  entire,  and  clean." 

If  the  susceptibility  of  genius  accompany  such  a 
temperament,  it  will  manifest  itself  in  works  of  quiet 
beauty  and  purity.  Delicacy  of  sentiment,  melody, 
and  finish  in  execution  rather  than  fervor,  originality, 
and  strength  will  mark  these  works ;  and  such  are  the 
characteristics  of  Longfellow's  verse.  He  had  warmth 
of  fancy  rather  than  ardor  of  feeling,  artistic  apprecia 
tion  and  delicacy,  but  nothing  of  that  quick,  original, 
and  contagious  rapture  which  our  French  neighbors 
call  verve.  The  romantic  and  picturesque  strongly 
attracted  him,  and  led  him  in  youth  and  early  man 
hood  to  think  and  feel  too  closely  after  the  manner 
of  the  books  he  admired.  Yet  this  romantic  leaning 
led  him  into  no  extravagances  in  practical  life.  He 
had  a  fine  common  sense  that  preserved  him  from  the 
intellectual  delusions  of  Transcendentalism.  He  de 
tected  the  unsound  vein  in  Emerson's  thinking,  and 
said  of  him :  "  He  is  one  of  the  finest  lecturers  I  ever 
heard,  with  magnificent  passages  of  true  prose-poetry. 
But  it  is  all  dreamery,  after  all."  Longfellow's  roman 
ticism  was  the  natural  result  of  a  youth  of  ease,  cul 
ture,  and  foreign  travel  on  a  susceptible,  poetical 
temperament ;  but  when  life's  harsh  experiences  had 
matured  him,  he  learned  the  austere  beauty  of  reality, 
and  expressed  its  common  lessons  in  simple  melodious 
verse,  and  in  so  doing  he  fulfilled  his  ardent  wish 
that  he  might  not  pass  away  and  leave  no  mark  of 
his  existence.  He  has  admirably  characterized  his 


Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow          215 

own  poetry  in  "  The  Day  is  Done."     He  himself  is 
not  one  of  "  the  grand  old  Masters,"  or 

"  bards  sublime 
Whose  distant  footsteps  echo 
Through  the  corridors  of  Time." 

But  he  is  the  humbler  poet  whose 

*'  songs  have  power  to  quiet 
The  restless  pulse  of  care, 

And  come  like  the  benediction 
That  follows  after  prayer." 


CHAPTER  XI 

JOHN   GREENLEAF    WHITTIER   (1807-1892) 

JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER  belongs  to  a 
class  of  poets  who  "  grow  upon  us,"  to  use  an 
expression  of  approval  for  that  which  is  essentially 
good  but  which  does  not  recommend  itself  by  any 
thing  superficially  striking  or  dazzling.  He  is  rarely 
a  favorite  with  the  young,  unless  they  are  old-fash 
ioned  enough  to  believe  that  simplicity  is  a  virtue 
and  calmness  an  indication  of  strength,  or  have 

"  The  eye  to  see,  the  hand  to  cull 
Of  common  things  the  beautiful." 

But  he  steals  into  the  affections,  —  he  sits  a  restful, 
cheering  presence  at  the  hearth  of  those  who  have 
known  the  storms  of  life  and  are  now  thankful  for 
its  calms  and  harbors.  He,  too,  knew  life's  storms 
and  perils,  but  weathered  them  bravely  and  came  to 
port  in  calm.  He  gave  the  vigor  of  his  youth  and 
manhood  to  the  antislavery  cause;  and  though  the 
poetry  by  which  he  is  to  be  remembered  is  not  that 
which  he  wrote  in  defence  of  freedom,  it  is  impossible 
to  read  his  early  antislavery  poems  without  feeling 
a  tingle  of  the  blood,  and  realizing  that  he  spoke 
the  solemn  truth  when  he  said  to  his  fellow-worker 
Garrison :  — 


John  Greenleaf  Whittier  217 

"  I  am  not  insensible  to  literary  reputation.  I  love,  per 
haps  too  well,  the  praise  and  good- will  of  my  fellow-men ; 
but  I  set  a  higher  value  on  my  name  as  appended  to  the  anti- 
slavery  declaration  of  1833  than  on  the  titlepage  of  any  book. 

'  My  voice,  though  not  the  loudest,  has  been  heard 
Wherever  Freedom  raised  her  cry  of  pain.'  " 

The  echoes  of  this  voice  full  of  passion  and  pain 
have  almost  died  away  with  the  wrong  it  strove  to 
right;  the  voice  that  we  listen  to  now  is  restful 
without  dulness,  full  of  peace  and  sweetness.  It 
brings  to  us  beautiful  memories  of  family  affections, 
of  country  life,  glimpses  of  green  fields  and  woods, 
the  scents  of  wild-  flowers,  and  the  babble  of  brooks, 
—  and  interwoven  through  them  all  a  rich,  low 
undertone,  freighted  with  a  message  of  trustful  hope 
and  calm  that  makes  us  fling  with  him  "the  windows 
of  the  soul  "  "  wide  open  to  the  sun,"  and  say :  — 

"  No  longer  forward  nor  behind 

I  look  in  hope  or  fear ; 
But  grateful,  take  the  good  I  find, 
The  best  of  now  and  here. 

"  Enough  that  blessings  undeserved, 

Have  marked  my  erring  track ; 
That  wheresoe'er  my  feet  have  swerved, 
His  chastening  turned  me  back. 

"  That  care  and  trial  seem  at  last 
Through  memory's  sunset  air, 
Like  mountain-ranges  overpast, 
In  purple  distance  fair. 

"That  all  the  jarring  notes  of  life 

Seem  blending  in  a  psalm ; 
And  all  the  angles  of  its  strife 
Slow  rounding  into  calm. 


2 1 8     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  And  so  the  shadows  fall  apart, 
And  so  the  west  winds  play ; 
And  all  the  windows  of  my  heart 
I  open  to  the  day." 

John  G.  Whittier  was  born  on  a  farm  near  the 
town  of  Haverhill,  Massachusetts,  on  the  seventeenth 
of  December,  1807.  His  parents  were  Quakers  in 
moderate  circumstances:  the  boy  helped  with  the 
farm  work,  milked  seven  cows,  and  until  he  was 
nineteen  had  no  other  educational  advantages  than 
those  afforded  by  the  district  school  with  its  change 
of  teachers  every  winter.  Among  these  teachers  of 
Whittier's  boyhood  only  two  were  fit  to  be  instruc 
tors,  and  to  one  of  them  Whittier  owed  his  introduc 
tion  to  the  poems  of  Robert  Burns.  There  were  not 
above  twenty  volumes  in  his  father's  home,  and  they 
were  chiefly  of  a  religious  character,  the  journals  of 
pioneer  ministers  in  the  Society  of  Friends,  and  the 
boy  would  now  and  then  walk  a  mile  to  borrow  a 
book  of  biography  or  travel  when  he  heard  of  it. 
He  was  fourteen  when  his  schoolmaster  lent  him 
Burns's  poems ;  it  was  about  the  first  poetry  he  had 
ever  read,  and  it  had  a  lasting  influence  upon  him 
which  he  recalls  in  his  poem  to  Burns  on  receiving 
a  sprig  of  heather  in  blossom :  — 

"Wild  heather  bells,  and  Robert  Burns, 

The  moorland  flower  and  peasant, 
How  at  their  mention,  memory  turns 
Her  pages  old  and  pleasant ! 

"  Sweet  day,  sweet  songs  !  the  golden  hours 

Grew  brighter  for  that  singing, 
From  brook  and  bird  and  meadow  flowers 
A  dearer  welcome  bringing. 


John  Greenleaf  Whittier  2 1 9 

"  New  light  on  home-seen  nature  beamed, 

New  glory  over  woman, 
And  daily  life  and  duty  seemed 
No  longer  poor  and  common. 

"  I  woke  to  find  the  simple  truth 

Of  fact  and  feeling  better 
Than  all  the  dreams  that  held  my  youth 
A  still  repining  debtor. 

"  I  saw  through  all  familiar  things 

The  romance  underlying, 
The  joys  and  griefs  that  plume  the  wings 
Of  fancy  skyward  flying. 

"  Let  those  who  never  erred  forget 

His  worth  in  vain  bewailings, 
Sweet  soul  of  song  !  I  own  my  debt 
Uncancelled  by  his  failings." 

It  was  the  songs  of  Burns  that  first  awoke  the  gift 
of  song  in  Whittier.  Some  of  his  youthful  verses 
were  printed  in  the  Newburyport  "  Free  Press,"  then 
edited  by  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  who  was  only 
three  years  his  senior.  Young  Garrison  was  the  first 
to  recognize  the  genius  of  his  unknown  contributor, 
and  one  summer  day  in  1826  he  called  on  the  young 
poet.  John  was  hoeing  in  the  cornfield,  barefooted 
and  in  his  shirt-sleeves.  He  was  called  to  the  house, 
and  dressed  himself  properly  to  meet  his  new  friend. 
Garrison  urged  the  family  to  give  the  boy  an  educa 
tion  befitting  his  genius.  But  the  father  had  not  the 
means  to  do  so,  though  he  consented  to  spare  him 
from  the  farm,  if  he  could  pay  his  own  expenses  at 
the  Haverhill  Academy.  A  laborer  in  the  neighbor 
hood  taught  him  to  make  slippers  retailing  at  twenty- 
five  cents  a  pair,  and  in  the  winter  of  1826  he  earned 


220    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

enough  to  buy  a  suit  of  clothes  and  to  pay  his  ex 
penses  for  six  months  at  the  academy.  He  took  up 
the  study  of  French  in  addition  to  the  ordinary 
English  branches,  and  read  with  avidity  all  the  books 
that  came  in  his  way.  He  boarded  with  the  editor 
of  the  "  Haverhill  Gazette/'  and  was  a  great  favorite 
with  the  young  people  of  the  village  on  account  of 
his  courtesy,  liveliness,  and  kindly  wit  He  was  a 
tall,  slender,  handsome  youth,  having  attained  his  full 
height,  five  feet  ten  and  a  half  inches,  at  the  age  of 
fifteen.  His  complexion  was  a  clear  olive,  his  hair 
and  eyes  black. 

After  a  term  in  the  academy,  he  taught  a  district 
school  in  the  winter  of  1827  to  pay  his  expenses  for 
another  term's  tuition.  He  did  not  enjoy  his  experi 
ence  as  a  teacher.  It  was  the  day  of  the  reign  of 
arithmetic,  and  the  big  boys  used  to  bring  him  mathe 
matical  puzzles  to  work  out;  to  save  himself  from 
disgrace  in  the  eyes  of  his  pupils,  he  spent  many 
a  weary  night  over  the  solution  of  these  useless 
problems.  Writing  to  a  friend  of  his  future  work 
in  November,  1828,  he  says:  — 

"  School-keeping,  out  upon  it !  The  memory  of  my  last 
year's  experience  comes  up  before  me  like  a  horrible  dream. 
No,  I  had  rather  be  a  tin-pedler,  and  drive  around  the 
country  with  a  bunch  of  sheepskins  hanging  to  my  wagon. 
I  had  rather  hawk  essences  from  dwelling  to  dwelling,  or 
practise  physic  between  Colly  Hill  and  Country  Bridge. 

"  Seriously  —  the  situation  of  editor  of  the  '  Philanthropist ' 
is  not  only  respectable,  but  it  is  peculiarly  pleasant  to  one 
who  takes  so  deep  an  interest  as  I  do  in  the  great  cause 
it  is  laboring  to  promote.  I  would  enter  upon  my  task  with 
a  heart  free  from  misanthropy,  and  glowing  with  that  feeling 


John  Greenleaf  Whittier  221 

that  wishes  well  to  all.  I  would  rather  have  the  memory  of 
a  Howard,  a  Wilberforce,  and  a  Clarkson,  than  the  undying 
fame  of  Byron." 

Another  six  months  in  the  Haverhill  Academy 
and  his  school-days  were  over.  Then  he  edited  a 
paper  in  Boston  for  a  short  time,  but  he  was  needed 
on  the  farm  and  went  back  home  again.  He  still 
continued  to  write,  however,  and  for  a  time  edited 
the  "  Haverhill  Gazette."  In  1830  he  went  to  Hart 
ford  to  succeed  George  D.  Prentice  as  editor  of  the 
"  New  England  Weekly  Review."  But  after  a  year 
and  a  half  he  resigned  his  editorship  on  account  of 
ill-health,  and  returned  to  the  farm.  His  father's 
death  in  1831  left  him  the  main  support  of  his 
widowed  mother  and  the  family.  He  worked  hard 
and  faithfully,  now  at  the  plough,  now  with  the  pen. 
Through  his  strict  economy  he  was  always  able  to 
save  money,  and  even  when  earning  but  nine  dollars 
a  week  in  Boston  he  was  able  to  save  half  of  it 
to  help  to  pay  off  the  mortgage  on  the  farm.  His 
ambitions  at  this  time  were  political  and  philan 
thropic.  He  longed  to  be  in  a  position  to  speak 
and  act  with  power  against  the  curse  of  slavery. 
Garrison  had  begun  in  1831  his  publication  of  the 
"  Liberator  "  with  its  famous  declaration :  — 

"  I  will  be  as  harsh  as  truth,  and  as  uncompromising  as 
justice.  I  am  in  earnest,  I  will  not  equivocate,  I  will  not 
excuse,  I  will  not  retreat  a  single  inch,  and  I  WILL  BE 

HEARD  !  " 

Whittier,  too,  would  be  heard.  He  published  at 
his  own  expense,  in  1833,  an  antislavery  pamphlet, 
and  followed  it  by  frequent  newspaper  articles  on  the 


222     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

subject.  Three  years  later  he  was  made  correspond 
ing  secretary  of  the  Haverhill  antislavery  society. 
The  word  "  abolitionist "  was  then  a  hated  one,  and 
in  making  his  opinions  public,  Whittier  several  times 
incurred  the  dangers  which  arise  from  infuriated 
mobs.  He  was  once  pelted  with  rotten  eggs,  mud, 
and  stones.  In  1838,  while  editing  the  "  Pennsylvania 
Freeman "  in  Philadelphia,  his  printing-office  was 
burned  by  a  mob.  "  For  twenty  years,"  he  writes 
to  a  friend  in  1866,  "  I  was  shut  out  from  the  favor 
of  book-sellers  and  magazine  editors,  but  I  was  en 
abled  by  rigid  economy  to  live  in  spite  of  them,  — 
and  to  see  the  end  of  the  infernal  institution  which 
proscribed  me.  Thank  God  for  it."  In  memory  of 
this  long  struggle  and  its  triumphant  close,  Whittier 
once  said  to  a  boy :  "  My  lad,  if  thou  wouldst  win 
success,  join  thyself  to  some  unpopular  but  noble 
cause." 

In  1839  we  find  the  Whittier  family  removed  to 
Amesbury,  where  a  cottage  had  been  bought  from 
the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  the  farm  three  years 
before.  This  cottage  continued  to  be  Whittier's 
home  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He  never  married, 
and  after  the  death  of  his  mother  his  housekeeper 
for  a  number  of  years  was  his  younger  sister,  Eliza 
beth,  a  brilliant  and  noble-hearted  woman,  between 
whom  and  her  brother  there  existed  the  tenderest 
affection.  Her  death  in  1864  was  a  blow  from  which 
he  never  fully  recovered. 

The  first  complete  edition  of  Whittier's  poems  was 
published  in  1857.  His  antislavery  poems  had  ap 
peared  in  1849,  under  the  title  of  "Voices  of  Free 
dom,"  but  it  was  not  until  1866  that  his  masterpiece, 


John  Greenleaf  Whittier  223 

"  Snowbound,"  was  given  to  the  world.  There  is  not 
in  our  language  a  more  exquisite  poem  descriptive  of 
domestic  joys  and  sorrows  than  "  Snowbound."  It  is 
a  bit  of  New  England  country  life  transfigured  by 
immortal  verse.  It  is  no  picture  of  the  imagination ; 
it  is  as  real  as  the  soil  under  our  feet.  It  is  a  man's 
recollections  of  the  home  of  his  boyhood, — a  man 
upon  whom  the  snows  of  age  are  beginning  to  fall, 
but  so  lightly  that  they  have  no  power  to  chill  the 
warmth  of  his  heart  or  the  glow  of  his  fancy.  It  is  a 
description  of  the  home  from  whence  come  the  sinews 
and  brain  of  our  nation ;  a  home  in  which  character 
can  ripen ;  in  which  duty  and  labor  have  a  large  part 
to  play ;  in  which  the  inmates,  dependent  upon  one 
another  for  solace  and  happiness,  are  bound  together 
by  ties  of  deathless  affection ;  in  which  the  pleasures 
are  of  that  innocent,  wholesome  character  that  leaves 
no  bitter  after-sting  of  regret  or  weariness ;  in  which 
nature  seems  large  because  it  is  close  at  hand,  and 
the  world's  tumult  small,  because  its  echoes,  softened 
by  distance,  hardly  reach  the  inattentive  ear. 

"Snowbound"  is  rich  in  beautiful  character 
sketches.  The  duty-loving  father  and  mother,  with 
their  stories  of  early  days ;  the  dear  aunt  in  whom 

"  The  morning  dew  that  dries  so  soon 
With  others,  glistened  at  her  noon ;  " 

the  elder  sister  with  "  full  rich  nature,"  and  the  young 
est  and  dearest,  in  whose  death  the  poet  felt  "  a  loss 
in  all  familiar  things ;  "  the  genial  uncle  "  innocent  of 
books,"  but  "  rich  in  lore  of  fields  and  brooks ;  " 
the  young  schoolmaster,  "  large-brained,  clear-eyed  ;  " 
the  stranger  guest,  —  all  these  are  drawn  with  ex- 


224    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

quisite  precision  and  delicacy.  "  Snowbound  "  found 
its  way  at  once  to  the  heart  of  the  public  and  has 
never  left  it.  It  was  followed  in  1867  by  the  "Tent 
on  the  Beach/'  a  collection  of  poetic  tales  feigned  to 
be  related  by  the  poet  and  his  two  friends,  Bayard 
Taylor  and  James  T.  Fields,  while  encamped  on 
Salisbury  Beach. 

Among  Whittier's  minor  poems  the  following  have 
always  been  popular  favorites,  and  show  the  poet 
at  his  best:  "The  Barefoot  Boy,"  "  Maud  Muller," 
"  Barbara  Frietchie,"  whose  story  was  communicated 
to  the  poet  by  Mrs.  Southworth,  the  novelist,  "  Mary 
Garvin,"  "The  Witch's  Daughter,"  "Telling  the 
Bees,"  "  The  Robin,"  "  Hampton  Beach,"  "  In  School 
Days,"  "  My  Psalm,"  "  My  Triumph,"  "  The  Eternal 
Goodness,"  "  Last  Walk  in  Autumn,"  "  Ichabod,"  and 
"  Skipper  Ireson's  Ride." 

No  American  poet  has  so  thoroughly  infused 
his  own  personality  into  his  work  as  Whittier.  In 
all  that  he  has  written,  and  he  has  written  much 
prose  as  well  as  poetry,  there  is  a  distinctively 
individual  note,  quickly  recognizable  to  the  lover 
of  Whittier,  and  endearing  him  more  and  more 
to  the  poet,  as  he  learns  the  rarity  and  fineness 
of  it.  There  was  in  him  a  remarkable  blending  of 
Quaker  severity  and  chasteness  with  the  poet's  sus 
ceptibility  and  passionate  love  of  beauty;  a  tolerance 
wide  as  the  world  for  all  human  frailties  and  human 
doubts,  and  a  faith  in  God  as  simple  and  unquestion 
ing  as  a  little  child's ;  a  nervous  sensitiveness  almost 
fastidious,  and  yet  so  sane  and  tender  a  love  for  all 
simple,  homely  joys,  —  so  restful  a  calm  sought  and 
kept  amidst  all  the  poetic  oscillations  of  a  fiery  spirit. 


John  Greenleaf  Whittier  225 

He  has  given  us  in  his   poem  "  My  Namesake "  an 
analysis  of  himself  which  is  remarkably  true  :  — 

"  In  him  the  grave  and  playful  mixed, 
And  wisdom  held  with  folly  truce, 
And  nature  compromised  betwixt 
Good  fellow  and  recluse. 

"  He  loved  the  good  and  wise,  but  found 

His  human  heart  to  all  akin 
Who  met  htm  on  the  common  ground 
Of  suffering  and  of  sin. 

"  His  eye  was  beauty's  powerless  slave, 

And  his  the  ear  which  discord  pains, 
Few  guessed  beneath  his  aspect  grave 
What  passions  strove  in  chains. 

"He  had  his  share  of  care  and  pain, 

No  holiday  was  life  to  him ; 
Still  in  the  heirloom  cup  we  drain, 
The  bitter  drop  will  swim. 

"  Yet  heaven  was  kind,  and  here  a  bird 

And  there  a  flower  beguiled  his  way ; 
And,  cool,  in  summer  noons,  he  heard 
The  fountains  plash  and  play. 

"  On  all  his  sad  or  restless  moods 

The  patient  peace  of  nature  stole ; 
The  quiet  of  the  fields  and  woods 
Sank  deep  into  his  soul. 

"  He  worshipped  as  his  fathers  did, 

And  kept  the  faith  of  childish  days, 
And,  howsoe'er  he  strayed  or  slid. 
He  loved  the  good  old  ways, 

"  The  simple  tastes,  the  kindly  traits, 

The  tranquil  air  and  gentle  speech, 
The  silence  of  the  soul  that  waits 
For  more  than  man  to  teach." 
15 


226    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Whittier's  health  was  never  robust,  yet  in  spite  of 
his  semi-invalidism  he  lived  to  be  eighty-five,  suffering 
a  light  stroke  of  paralysis  shortly  before  his  death, 
which  occurred  on  the  seventh  of  September,  1892. 

"  I  inherited  from  my  parents,"  he  says,  "  a  nervous 
headache,  and  on  account  of  it  have  never  been  able 
to  do  all  I  wished  to  do."  In  middle  and  later  life 
he  could  not  read  or  write  for  half  an  hour  without 
severe  pain.  He  suffered,  too,  from  a  frequent  pain 
in  the  region  of  the  heart ;  any  little  excitement,  an 
animated  conversation,  the  presence  of  strangers, 
brought  on  these  severe  headaches  and  pains  and 
drove  him  into  solitude  to  avoid  them.  This  shrink 
ing  from  society  was  often  wrongly  attributed  to 
shyness.  He  was  a  poor  sleeper  but  an  early  riser, 
and  we  are  told  that  in  forty  years  he  rarely  missed 
seeing  the  sun  rise.  He  was  color-blind,  being  wholly 
unable  to  distinguish  green  from  red.  S.  T.  Pickard, 
his  biographer,  relates  that  his  mother  discovered 
this  defect  when  he  was  a  little  boy  picking  wild 
strawberries.  He  could  see  no  difference  between 
the  color  of  the  berry  and  that  of  the  leaf.  Only 
white  or  yellow  roses  were  pretty  to  him,  and  the 
golden-rod  was  his  favorite  flower.  The  autumn 
foliage  had  no  beauty  of  color  to  him  unless  yellows 
predominated  in  it,  and  the  radiantly  colored  rainbow 
looked  to  him  like  a  bright  yellow  arch.  He  was 
partially  deaf  after  middle  life,  and  took  refuge  in  this 
deafness  at  times  to  excuse  himself  from  taking  part 
in  conversations  that  bored  him  ;  for  like  all  men 
who  have  made  their  mark  in  the  world,  he  had  to 
pay  the  penalty  of  publicity  by  obtrusive  visits  from 
curious  and  impertinent  sight-seers.  Says  Pickard :  — 


John  Greenleaf  Whittier  227 

"  It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  gentleness  was  a 
necessity  of  his  nature  ;  it  was  in  reality  the  result  of  resolute 
self-control  and  the  habitual  government  of  a  tempestuous 
spirit.  He  was  quick  and  nervous  in  movement,  but  never 
otherwise  than  dignified  and  graceful.  In  conversation  he 
spoke  slowly  and  with  precision,  hesitating  occasionally  with 
out  the  slighest  nervousness  for  the  word  he  wanted.  .  .  .  He 
religiously  curbed  his  tongue,  and  said  of  himself  that  he  was 
born  without  an  atom  of  patience  in  his  composition,  but 
that  he  had  tried  to  manufacture  it  as  needed." 

In  early  youth  he  habitually  wore  the  Quaker  gray, 
but  later  wore  no  outward  sign  of  his  faith  but  a 
black  broadcloth  coat  cut  in  Quaker  style.  But  he 
clung  all  his  life  to  the  Quaker  form  of  speech,  the 
familiar  thee  and  thou  which  he  had  learned  at  his 
mother's  knee ;  and  he  clung  with  the  same  tenacity 
to  the  simple  and  early  forms  of  Quaker  worship. 
In  a  letter  addressed  to  the  editor  of  the  "  Friends' 
Review  "  in  Philadelphia,  he  says  in  regard  to  some 
changes  in  the  Society :  — 

"There  is  a  growing  desire  for  experimenting  upon  the 
dogmas  and  expedients  and  practices  of  the  sects.  .  .  .  But 
for  myself  I  prefer  the  old  ways.  With  the  broadest  possible 
tolerance  for  all  honest  seekers  after  truth,  I  love  the  Society 
of  Friends.  My  life  has  been  nearly  spent  in  laboring  with 
those  of  other  sects  in  behalf  of  the  suffering  and  enslaved ; 
and  I  have  never  felt  like  quarrelling  with  Orthodox  or  Uni 
tarian  who  were  willing  to  pull  with  me  side  by  side  at  the 
rope  of  Reform.  A  very  large  proportion  of  my  dearest  per 
sonal  friends  are  outside  of  our  communion ;  and  I  have 
learned  with  John  Woolman  to  find  '  no  narrowness  respect 
ing  sects  and  opinions.'  But  with  a  kindly  and  candid  sur 
vey  of  them  all,  I  turn  to  my  own  Society,  thankful  to  the 


228     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Divine  Providence  which  placed  me  where  I  am ;  and  with 
an  unshaken  faith  in  the  one  distinctive  doctrine  of  Quakerism 
—  the  light  within  —  the  immanence  of  the  Divine  Spirit  in 
Christianity." 

Whittier  never  went  to  a  theatre  or  a  circus  in  his 
life.  On  his  first  visit  to  Boston  as  a  boy,  he  prom 
ised  his  mother  that  he  would  not  go  to  the  theatre, 
and  he  kept  the  promise  as  long  as  he  lived.  He 
was  no  traveller  in  foreign  countries,  and  did  not 
think  that  he  had  lost  much  of  the  world's  beauty  by 
seeing  no  country  but  his  own,  since 

"  he  who  wanders  widest  lifts 
No  more  of  beauty's  jealous  veils 
Than  he  who  from  his  doorway  sees 
The  miracle  of  flowers  and  trees, 
Feels  the  warm  Orient  in  the  noonday  air, 
And  from  cloud-minarets  hears  the  sunset  call  to  prayer." 

He  had  a  quaint  frankness  of  speech  that  often 
amused  his  friends.  Mrs.  Fields  relates  that  once 
when  pressed  to  stay  as  a  guest  after  he  had  risen  to 
go,  he  replied  to  his  host's  question,  "  Why  can*t  you 
stay?  "  "  Because,  I  tell  you,  I  don't  want  to."  He 
heartily  disliked  being  a  chief  object  of  interest  any 
where,  and  much  preferred  the  society  of  children 
and  young  people  to  that  of  effusive  literary  admirers. 
He  liked  the  old  English  classics,  and  especially  en 
joyed  reading  Milton's  prose.  He  liked  strength  in 
repose,  not  in  tumult.  "Elizabeth  has  been  reading 
Browning's  poem  (Men  and  Women),  and  she  tells 
me  it  is  great,"  he  writes  to  a  friend.  "  I  have  only 
dipped  into  it  here  and  there,  but  it  is  not  exactly 
comfortable  reading.  It  seemed  to  me  like  a  galvanic 


John  Greenleaf  Whittier  229 

battery  in  full  play  —  its  spasmodic  utterances  and 
intense  passion  make  me  feel  as  if  I  had  been  taking 
a  bath  among  electric  eels.  But  I  have  not  read 
enough  to  criticise." 

His  own  literary  method  is  as  far  as  possible 
removed  from  this.  It  grew  out  of  his  life :  — 

"  No  dreamer  [he]  but  real  all,  — 

Strong  manhood  crowning  vigorous  youth, 
Life  made  by  duty  epical 
And  rhythmic  with  the  truth." 

And  elsewhere  he  sings :  — 

"  Better  to  stem  with  heart  and  hand 

The  roaring  tide  of  life,  than  lie 
Unmindful,  on  its  flowery  strand, 

Of  God's  occasions  drifting  by ! 
Better  with  naked  nerve  to  bear 
The  needles  of  this  goading  air, 
Than,  in  the  lap  of  sensual  ease,  forego 
The  godlike  power  to  do,  the  godlike  power  to  know." 

Whittier  used  his  poetic  gift,  as  we  have  seen,  in 
the  service  of  liberty,  and  when  that  service  was  over, 
he  used  it  to  give  expression  to  what  he  saw  of  pure 
and  good  in  life  and  nature,  —  to  sing  his  own  deep 
faith  and  trust  and  calm,  and  his  gratitude  for  all  the 
sweet,  free,  common  gifts  of  life.  To  read  him  is 
like  taking  a  solitary  walk  at  sunset  in  summer,  along 
a  high  ridge  with  a  glorious  sweep  of  radiant  sky 
bending  over  fields  of  ripening  grain  and  deep  green, 
distant  woodland.  The  bustle  and  heat  and  glare  of 
day  are  over,  and  as  we  yield  to  the  sweet  influence 
of  the  beautiful  hour,  we  taste  again  the  exquisite 
serenity  of  perfect  possession  of  ourselves.  It  is  as 
if  we  were  penetrated  by  some  subtle,  holy  influence, 


230    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

—  a  sacred  hush  in  which  all  restlessness  is  stilled, 
all  desires  dead,  yet  the  ecstasy  of  life  thrills  every 
nerve;  we  drink  deep,  full  draughts  of  it,  and  feel 
clean  through  and  through.  We  have  come  under 
the  influence  of  the  poet's 

"  prayer  of  Plato  old, 
God  make  thee  beautiful  within  ; 
And  let  thine  eyes  the  good  behold 
In  everything  save  sin." 

The  poet  who  can  influence  us  in  this  way  has  an 
assured  place  in  the  literature  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER   XII 

EDGAR  ALLAN   POE   (1809-1849) 

IT  often  happens  that  certain  traits  of  character  or 
peculiarities  of  disposition,  ugly  and  repulsive 
in  themselves,  are  associated  with  some  graces  of 
person  or  wonderful  mental  gifts  that  blind  us  to 
their  true  nature.  Instead  of  any  longer  repelling 
us,  they  are  sources  of  a  mysterious  fascination. 
We  do  not  love  the  possessor  less  but  more  for  them. 
The  egotism  we  laugh  at  and  depise  in  Boswell,  we 
admire  and  stand  in  awe  of  in  sturdy  Sam  Johnson, 
and  dearly  love  in  such  amiable  egotists  as  Charles 
Lamb  and  La  Fontaine.  The  more  they  speak  of 
themselves,  the  more  they  delight  us.  Their  ego 
tism  has  the  innocence  and  freshness  of  childhood, 
and  appeals  to  our  common  human  nature  in  the 
same  artless  and  lovable  way.  Even  the  imperfec 
tions  of  such  men  as  Burns  soften  reproach  into  pity, 
and  teach  us  the  charity  that  suffereth  long  and  is 
kind. 

Probably  no  man  ever  stood  in  greater  need  of 
that  charity,  or  ever  received  more  of  it,  than  Edgar 
A.  Poe.  Of  brilliant  but  erratic  genius;  inheriting 
an  unfortunate  temperament,  the  legacy  of  the 
unnatural  and  irregular  life  of  his  parents;  spoiled 
by  indulgence  in  his  childhood;  left  to  his  own 
resources  in  manhood;  isolated  from  his  kind  by 


23  2    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

want  of  sympathy  with  their  aims  and  pursuits,  —  his 
life  was  a  tragedy,  in  memory  of  which  censure 
grows  mute,  and  sympathy  is  apt  to  become  an 
unwise  admiration.  What  the  man  really  did  is 
lost  sight  of  in  what  he  might  have  done.  The  fas 
cination  of  a  personality  so  extraordinary  and  diffi 
cult  to  understand  is  blended  with  the  estimate  of 
his  genius,  and  unduly  enhances  it.  In  bright  sun 
light  objects  are  seen  with  a  distinctness  that  brings 
out  every  spot,  every  protuberance,  and  leaves  noth 
ing  to  illusion.  It  is  the  dim  light  of  a  misty 
morning  that  gives  confused  and  enlarged  images, 
and  leads  us  to  suspect  unknown  forms  in  a  vague 
background  that  leaves  all  to  the  imagination. 
Viewed  in  an  analogous  way,  Edgar  A.  Poe  is  re 
garded  by  many  critics,  especially  in  France,  as  the 
most  original  and  powerful  genius  America  has  pro 
duced.  But  in  the  light  of  the  most  intelligent 
modern  criticism,  this  estimate  shrinks  to  true 
proportions.  Genius  is  not  denied  him;  but  far 
from  being  of  the  highest  order,  it  is  seen  to  be  very 
narrow  in  its  range,  and  within  that  range  morbid 
and  analytic  rather  than  sound  and  creative.  An 
unprejudiced  study  of  his  life  and  works  cannot  fail 
to  make  the  truth  of  this  assertion  apparent. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  born  in  Boston  on  the  nine 
teenth  of  January,  1809.  On  his  father's  side  he 
was  a  descendant  of  General  David  Poe,  a  hero  of  the 
Revolution,  the  sod  of  whose  grave  Lafayette  once 
kissed  as  he  said,  "A  noble  heart  rests  here."  On 
his  mother's  side  he  was  descended  from  a  family  of 
English  actresses.  His  mother,  Elizabeth  Arnold, 
married  Mr.  Hopkins,  a  member  of  the  troupe  to 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  233 

which  she  belonged;  later,  as  Widow  Hopkins, 
she  captivated  David  Poe,  and  was  married  to  him 
within  a  month  of  her  first  husband's  death.  David 
Poe  was  never  more  than  a  third-rate  actor,  having 
abandoned  the  study  of  law  to  go  upon  the  stage, 
much  against  the  wishes  of  his  family.  But  Mrs. 
Poe,  a  piquant,  arch  little  woman,  was  an  actress  of 
some  ability  in  light  comedy  and  melodrama.  Three 
children  were  born  to  them :  William,  Edgar,  and 
r  Rosalie.  From  Boston,  where  they  remained  three 
years,  the  Poes  went  to  New  York  and  subsequently 
South,  where  their  poverty  and  misfortunes  attracted 
the  charitable  notice  of  the  public  of  Richmond, 
Virginia.  Mrs.  Poe  was  taken  ill  and  died  in  Rich 
mond.  Her  husband  had  died  of  consumption 
shortly  before,  and  the  three  orphan  children  were 
left  to  the  care  of  charity.  The  eldest  boy,  William, 
fell  to  the  charge  of  a  friend  of  the  father's  in  Balti 
more  ;  a  lady  in  Richmond  took  charge  of  Rosalie, 
and  Edgar  was  adopted  by  Mr.  John  Allan  and  his 
wife,  who  had  no  children  of  their  own.  Mr.  John 
Allan  was  a  Scotchman  and  a  wealthy  tobacco-mer 
chant.  The  pretty  and  precocious  boy  was  petted 
and  made  much  of  by  the  Allan  family  and  their 
friends. 

In  1815  Mr.  Allan  took  his  wife  and  Edgar  to 
England,  and  placed  the  latter  in  the  Manor  House 
School,  Stoke  Newington,  a  London  suburb.  Traces 
of  his  pleasant  remembrance  of  this  school  are  to  be 
found  in  the  tale  "William  Wilson,"  where  he 
writes  lovingly  of  the  "old,  large,  rambling  Eliza 
bethan  house,"  and  speaks  of  the  dreamlike  and 
spirit-soothing  influences  of  the  venerable  old  town. 


234    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"The  ardor,  the  enthusiasm,  the  imperiousness  of 
my  disposition  rendered  me  a  marked  character 
among  my  schoolmates,"  he  writes.  His  teachers 
thought  him  a  clever  lad,  but  spoiled  by  too  liberal 
an  allowance  of  pocket-money.  He  remained  five 
years  in  this  school.  On  his  return  to  Richmond, 
in  1820,  he  was  sent  to  school  in  that  city.  Though 
he  was  a  leader  among  his  fellow-students,  both  in 
scholarship  and  athletic  sports,  his  self-will,  caprice, 
and  fitful  temper  made  him  unpopular.  When, 
through  misconduct,  he  had  justly  incurred  punish 
ment  at  school,  his  foster-parents  indignantly  re 
sented  his  being  punished,  and  thus  further  increased 
his  naturally  wayward  and  wilful  disposition,  He 
had,  too,  that  reserve  which  precludes  close  intimacy, 
and  is  sometimes  the  result  of  shrinking  delicacy 
and  sometimes  the  result  of  pride.  In  Edgar  A. 
Poe  it  was,  undoubtedly,  pride, — a  mingling  of 
boundless  pride  in  his  gifts  as  if  they  set  him  apart 
from  his  associates,  and  a  haughty  indifference  to 
the  claims  of  others.  "My  whole  nature  utterly 
revolts,"  he  once  said  in  later  life,  "at  the  idea  that 
there  is  any  being  in  the  universe  superior  to 
myself"  His  foster-parents  were  kind,  liberal, 
even  unwisely  indulgent  to  him,  but  he  seems  to 
have  felt  himself  an  alien,  and  no  real  heart-tie  of 
gratitude  or  affection  bound  him  to  them. 

He  entered  the  University  of  Virginia  in  1826, 
and  pursued  his  study  of  the  ancient  and  modern 
languages.  He  joined  the  fun-loving  set  of  students, 
and  became  addicted  to  the  vice  of  gambling.  He 
was  a  reckless  player,  and  incurred  a  debt  of  twenty- 
five  hundred  dollars,  which  his  foster-father  refused 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  235 

to  pay.  Moreover,  when  he  went  home  in  Decem 
ber,  Mr.  Allan  put  him  to  office  work  instead  of  per 
mitting  him  to  return  to  the  University.  The  work 
was  displeasing  to  him,  and  in  a  fit  of  petulance  he 
left  Richmond  for  Boston,  with  a  collection  of  youth 
ful  poems,  which  he  succeeded  in  getting  published 
under  the  name  of  " Tamerlane  and  Other  Poems." 
The  volume  brought  him  neither  reputation  nor 
money,  and  poor,  friendless,  and  solitary,  he  enlisted 
at  eighteen  in  the  army  of  the  United  States,  giv 
ing  his  age  as  twenty-two  and  his  name  as  Edgar  A. 
Perry.  He  must  have  faithfully  discharged  his 
duties,  for  in  1829  he  was  made  sergeant-major. 

Learning  of  his  enlistment  and  service,  Mr.  Allan 
procured  his  discharge  by  substitute  and  sent  him 
to  West  Point.  Before  going  there,  Poe  published 
a  long  poem  of  no  merit  called  "  Al  Aaraaf." 

At  West  Point  he  showed  a  particular  aptitude 
for  French  and  mathematics,  but  was  neglectful  of 
military  duties,  absenting  himself  at  pleasure  from 
roll-calls  and  drills.  Any  form  of  restraint  was 
particularly  distasteful  to  him,  and  six  months  of 
service  satisfied  him  that  life  at  West  Point  was 
wholly  unsuited  to  his  disposition,  and  he  systemati 
cally  set  himself  to  incurring  charges  for  dismissal. 
He  was  tried  for  offenses  against  discipline,  found 
guilty  and  dismissed  penniless.  About  the  time  of 
Poe's  admission  to  the  academy,  Mr.  Allan,  whose 
wife  had  died  some  time  before,  married  again,  and 
Poe,  who  had  conducted  himself  so  ungratefully 
toward  his  foster-father,  soon  discovered  that  he 
had  nothing  to  hope  from  him  in  the  way  of  inheri 
tance  or  of  immediate  assistance.  He  published  a 


236    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

second  and  subscription  edition  of  his  poems,  to 
which  new  ones  were  added,  and  with  the  small  sum 
received  he  went  to  Baltimore.  There  he  made 
several  unsuccessful  attempts  to  find  employment. 
At  last  an  offer  of  one  hundred  dollars  for  a  prize 
story  in  the  "Saturday  Visitor,"  edited  by  Lambert 
A.  Wilmer,  attracted  his  notice.  He  sent  a  number 
of  tales,  of  which  the  "  Manuscript  Found  in  a 
Bottle  "  received  the  first  prize.  This  bit  of  good 
fortune  relieved  him  for  a  time  from  the  wretched 
poverty  in  which  he  had  been  living.  His  aunt, 
Mrs.  Clemm,  his  father's  sister,  took  him  into  her 
house  to  board,  and  there  he  made  the  acquaintance 
of  his  child-cousin,  Virginia  Clemm,  whom  he  after 
ward  married. 

In  1835  ne  removed  from  Baltimore  to  Richmond, 
having  secured  employment  on  the  "  Southern  Liter 
ary  Messenger "  at  a  salary  of  ten  dollars  a  week. 
His  marriage  to  his  cousin,  who  was  not  quite  four 
teen  at  the  time,  took  place  the  next  year,  and  Mrs. 
Clemm  accompanied  her  daughter  to  Richmond, 
hoping  to  add  to  the  income  of  the  little  household 
by  keeping  boarders. 

Poe's  literary  ability  soon  made  itself  felt.  He 
undertook  the  editorship  of  the  "  Literary  Messenger," 
and  wrote  for  its  pages  a  number  of  his  weird  tales 
and  much  of  his  trenchant  criticism.  Unfortu 
nately,  those  intemperate  habits  which  ultimately 
led  to  his  ruin  were  already  fixed  upon  him,  and  his 
connection  with  the  "Messenger"  was  of  short  con 
tinuance.  It  is  said  that  no  one  could  work  more 
faithfully  and  regularly  than  Poe  under  the  stress  of 
necessity ;  but  he  belonged  to  that  unfortunate  class 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  237 

whom  prosperity  renders  madly  capricious  and  self- 
indulgent.  No  one  could  do  more  than  temporarily 
aid  him,  for  the  element  of  self-destruction  lay 
within  himself.  His  connection  with  the  "Messen 
ger"  was  severed  in  1837,  and  he  went  to  New  York. 
There,  in  the  following  year,  he  published  his 
longest  story,  "The  Narrative  of  Arthur  Gordon 
Pym."  It  was  not  a  successful  financial  venture, 
and  Poe  left  New  York  for  Philadelphia  to  work  on 
the  "Gentleman's  Magazine."  His  irregular  habits 
in  a  short  time  caused  his  dismissal.  He  found 
work  again  on  "  Graham's  Magazine,"  and  about  this 
time  wrote  some  of  his  best  short  stories:  "The 
Gold  Bug,"  "The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher," 
"The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,"  and  "The  Mys 
tery  of  Marie  Roget. " 

After  six  years'  stay  in  Philadelphia,  Poe  returned 
to  New  York  in  1844,  and  for  a  short  time  worked 
for  N.  P.  Willis  on  the  "Evening  Mirror."  His 
poem,  "The  Raven,"  was  published  in  this  paper  in 
1845.  It  attracted  wide-spread  notice,  and  in  the  same 
year  another  edition  of  his  poems  appeared,  contain 
ing  all  his  later  and  now  better  known  work.  His 
literary  reputation  was  now  of  such  a  character  that 
he  might  have  easily  earned  a  comfortable  income, 
but  it  was  just  at  this  period  that  the  severest  dis 
tress  of  his  life  began.  He  moved  into  a  little 
frame  cottage  at  Fordham,  just  out  of  the  city.  His 
wife,  who  had  broken  a  blood-vessel  while  singing, 
was  frail  and  ailing  and  threatened  with  death  from 
consumption.  Writing  of  the  agony  he  endured  at 
this  time,  Poe  says:  "I  am  constitutionally  sensi 
tive  —  nervous  in  a  very  unusual  degree.  I  became 


238    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

insane,  with  long  intervals  of  horrible  sanity." 
This  is,  perhaps,  the  most  charitable  as  well  as  the 
truest  explanation  of  those  incessant  fits  of  intem 
perance  that  drove  him  from  paper  to  paper,  and 
involved  him  in  quarrels  with  all  who  tried  to  be 
friend  him.  His  extreme  poverty  and  the  sufferings 
of  his  invalid  wife  were  dragged  into  the  glare  of 
publicity  by  that  pseudo-charity  which  is  always  so 
extremely  solicitous  that  the  left  hand  shall  know  all 
that  the  right  hand  doeth.  The  proud-spirited  poet 
bore  this  humiliation  with  a  manly  attempt  to  conceal 
his  real  condition,  but  it  was  only  too  apparent. 

In  January,  1847,  his  wife  died,  and  after  this 
event  a  marked  intellectual  decline  was  noticeable 
in  him ;  and  he  was,  undoubtedly,  not  responsible 
for  his  irrational  behavior  toward  two  women  whom 
he  wished  to  marry  and  to  whom  he  wrote  frantic 
and  despairing  love-letters.  During  all  this  time 
he  was  the  object  of  the  devoted  love  and  care  of 
one  woman,  to  whom,  more  than  to  any  other,  he 
owed  all  the  happiness  that  life  had  ever  brought 
him.  That  woman  was  Mrs.  Clemm,  his  aunt  and 
the  mother  of  his  wife.  She  sat  by  him  in  the 
long  watches  of  the  night  while  he  worked  at  a  new 
book  of  which  he  entertained  the  most  extravagant 
hopes.  He  told  Putnam,  the  publisher,  that  the 
book  contained  discoveries  of  more  interest  and 
importance  than  the  discovery  of  gravitation.  He 
called  the  new  book  "Eureka:  A  Prose  Poem,"  and 
said  of  it :  "  What  I  have  propounded  will  in  good 
time  revolutionize  the  world  of  physical  and  meta 
physical  science."  But  the  book  attracted  no 
attention. 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  239 

In  the  fall  of  1849  P°e  visited  Richmond  in  order 
to  make  arrangements  for  his  marriage  to  a  lady  of 
that  city.  On  his  return  home,  he  stopped  at  Balti 
more.  Of  what  befell  him  there,  little  is  positively 
known  beyond  the  sad  fact  of  his  death  at  a  hospital 
on  Sunday,  the  seventh  of  October,  1849.  Many 
years  after  his  death,  the  physician  who  attended 
him  at  the  hospital  made  public  a  statement  with 
reference  to  his  condition  at  that  time.  According 
to  that  statement,  Poe  was  found  in  a  stupor  lying 
on  a  bench  in  front  of  a  mercantile  house.  He  was 
not  recognized  until  ten  o'clock  A.  M.,  although  he 
had  been  lying  there  since  early  morning,  the  subject 
of  the  idle  curiosity  of  gathering  crowds.  No  smell  of 
liquor  was  perceived  on  his  breath  or  clothing.  He 
was  taken  to  a  hospital,  and  when  aroused  from  his 
stupor,  he  showed  consciousness  of  his  strange  sur 
roundings,  but  lapsed  into  a  delirium  and  spoke 
incoherently.  Just  before  his  death,  he  revived  and 
said:  "Doctor,  it  is  all  over;  write  Eddy  is  no 
more."  He  was  buried  in  Baltimore  the  next  day, 
and  his  grave  was  left  unmarked  by  a  stone  until 
1875.  Mrs.  Clemm  survived  the  poet  twenty  years, 
and  dying  at  the  same  hospital  in  Baltimore,  was 
buried,  as  she  had  requested,  by  his  side. 

According  to  Mrs.  Clemm,  the  poet  at  home  "was 
simple  and  affectionate  as  a  child,  and  during  all 
the  years  that  he  lived  with  me,"  she  adds,  "I  do 
not  remember  a  single  night  that  he  failed  to  come 
and  kiss  his  '  mother,'  as  he  called  me,  before  going 
to  bed."  The  testimony  of  other  women  who 
enjoyed  his  friendship  shows  that  he  must  have 
been  singularly  winning  and  gracious  in  manner 


240    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

when  he  chose  to  be.  Then,  too,  his  handsome 
person  created  a  favorable  impression  for  him  inde 
pendent  of  his  gifts.  He  was  of  slender  build,  and 
five  feet  eight  inches  tall.  His  soft,  black,  curly 
hair  framed  a  pallid,  melancholy  face  lighted  by 
luminous,  dark  eyes.  He  very  likely  portrayed  his 
own  physical  features  with  some  slight  idealization 
in  his  description  of  Roderick  Usher.  It  is  worthy 
of  remark  that  the  description  of  Ligeia's  personal 
beauty  closely  follows  that  of  Roderick  Usher. 
There  is  the  same  pallor,  the  same  lofty  brow,  jetty 
hair,  Hebraic  outline  of  nose,  and  luminous  black 
eyes.  These  were  also  characteristic  features  of  his 
wife's  beauty,  and  he  was  evidently  partial  to  them. 
But  though  Poe  seems  to  have  been  capable  of 
warm,  domestic  affections  and  sentimental  friend 
ships  for  women,  he  made  few  friends  among  men, 
and  was  by  temperament  one  of  those  unfortunates 
who  are  shut  out  from  their  kind  by  almost  complete 
self-absorption.  The  largest  natures  are  those  of 
widest  sympathy.  They  typify  the  race,  not  an 
idiosyncrasy.  They  understand  its  healthy  desires, 
its  aspirations,  its  sorrows,  its  joys,  its  weakness, 
and  its  strength.  Nothing  that  is  human  is  alien 
to  them.  They  absorb  by  sympathy  the  experiences 
of  all  with  whom  they  come  in  contact.  Heart  and 
intellect  are  enriched  by  this  quick  susceptibility 
and  ready  assimilation.  That  is  the  reason  that  if 
we  wish  to  praise  a  man's  acuteness  and  sanity  of 
intellect,  even  in  common  social  life,  we  say,  "He 
understands  human  nature."  It  is  said  of  Count 
Cavour,  Prime  Minister  of  Italy,  that  he  seemed  to 
take  pleasure  in  everything,  and  had  the  gift  which 


Edgar  Allan  Foe  24! 

cannot  be  acquired,  of  being  within  reach  of  every 
one.  The  commonest,  most  ignorant  day-laborer 
felt  at  home  with  him  by  an  instinctive  conscious 
ness  of  his  large  humanity.  He  was  not  one  man 
but  many  men.  If  to  this  gift  of  large  humanity 
there  be  added  the  gifts  of  imaginative  vigor  and 
musical  speech,  we  shall  have  genius  of  the  highest 
order,  —  the  genius  of  Homer,  Shakespeare,  Goethe. 
There  is  no  question  here  of  the  sanity  of  genius. 
These  men  typify  intellect  in  its  clearest  and  highest 
form. 

But  there  is  another  order  of  mind  and  tempera 
ment  exactly  the  opposite  of  this.  The  eye  in  this 
case  is  turned  inward,  not  outward.  The  mind  is 
imprisoned  within  a  narrow  circle  of  ideas.  Instead 
of  that  warm  love  of  humanity  that  leads  to  a  broad, 
sympathetic  understanding  of  our  common  nature, 
distrust  and  suspicion  lead  to  indifference  and 
hatred.  Human  nature  is  comprehended  not  in  its 
strength  and  nobility,  but  in  its  weakness  and 
degradation.  In  such  a  temperament  the  heat  and 
ferment  of  the  imagination  is  mistaken  for  warmth 
of  heart  and  feeling.  The  victim  of  this  morbid 
temperament  lives  in  a  fantastic  dream  world,  and 
because  he  cannot  reconcile  the  world  of  his  imagi 
nation  with  that  of  reality,  and  has  not  the  will 
power  or  the  inclination  to  abandon  the  unreal  for 
the  real,  he  suffers  daily  from  shattered  illusions, 
and  ends  in  misanthropy  and  pessimism,  if  not  in 
downright  madness.  All  his  sympathies  are  with 
revolt  and  emotionalism.  He  lives  in  sensations 
and  reverie,  not  in  action  and  thought.  The  genius 
of  such  men  is  of  that  type  that  is  allied  to  madness. 

16 


242    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Their  works  may  have  the  charm  of  exquisite  diction 
and  wonderful  analytic  skill;  but  the  analysis  is 
confined  to  that  of  self-torturing  emotions,  or  de 
praved  and  criminal  impulses.  Another  remarkable 
limitation  of  this  morbid  intellectual  power  is  an 
absence  of  anything  like  humor.  The  laughter  of 
these  men  is  sardonic,  a  convulsion  and  not  the 
natural  relief  of  a  tickled  midriff.  Rousseau, 
Chateaubriand,  Senancour  and  St.  Pierre  are  the 
most  striking  examples  in  foreign  literature  of  this 
type  of  genius,  and  Edgar  A.  Poe  is  the  most  strik 
ing  example  in  the  literature  of  America.  But 
though  essentially  of  the  same  type,  Poe's  genius 
manifested  itself  in  a  manner  peculiar  to  himself, 
and  in  a  marked  degree  influenced  by  his  era  and 
the  spirit  of  his  country.  The  peculiar  form  of  the 
sentimentalism  of  Rousseau  and  his  followers  —  its 
exaggerated  estimate  of  the  passion  of  love,  its 
melancholy,  its  restlessness  and  discontent — be 
longs  to  the  eighteenth  century  and  to  France. 
The  nineteenth  century,  with  its  scientific  discov 
eries,  exciting  curiosity,  and  directing  the  attention 
from  the  individual  himself  to  that  which  is  without 
him,  has  furnished  new  and  widely  different  subjects 
of  study.  Then,  too,  the  absence  of  any  insur 
mountable  barrier  of  caste  in  America,  and  the  con 
sequent  possibility  of  gratifying  worthy  aspirations 
by  honest  effort,  removes  any  legitimate  cause,  with 
regard  to  existing  institutions,  for  envious  dissatis 
faction  and  sullen  resentment.  Poe's  works,  there 
fore,  are  neither  in  subject-matter  nor  in  style  at 
all  like  those  of  the  great  French  sentimentalists ; 
but  he  belongs  to  their  order  of  genius  by  reason  of 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  243 

a  certain  moral  obliquity  or  perverseness,  an  impa 
tience  of  law  and  order,  a  self-will,  caprice,  and 
passion  that  mark  a  highly  excitable  and  diseased 
nervous  organization. 

Poe's  literary  work  covers  three  distinct  fields,  — 
poetry,  fiction,  and  criticism.  It  was  as  a  critic 
that  he  first  attracted  attention,  as  a  writer  of  tales 
that  he  first  established  a  reputation  for  original 
genius,  and  as  a  poet  that  he  was  most  ambitious  to 
be  remembered  and  is  at  present  most  widely  known. 
A  brief  consideration  of  his  work  in  these  three 
departments  of  literature  will  give  a  sufficiently 
clear  idea  of  the  peculiarities  of  his  genius. 

Poe's  strongest  and  most  characteristic  work  is 
to  be  found  in  his  prose  tales.  These  tales,  with 
few  exceptions,  are  stories  of  impossible  adventures 
told  with  grave  minuteness  of  detail,  or  studies  of 
crime  and  incipient  madness.  Poe  had  no  humor, 
and  the  few  sketches  he  has  written  with  the  inten 
tion  of  being  funny  are  as  feeble  and  arrant  non 
sense  as  ever  was  penned.  But  he  is  anything  but 
feeble  on  his  own  ground.  His  analysis  of  mono 
mania  reads  like  the  pages  of  a  pathological  journal 
and  affects  the  reader  like  a  visit  to  a  mad-house. 
The  circumstantial  fidelity  of  his  adventurous  nar 
ratives  sometimes  surprised  unthinking  readers  into 
a  belief  that  they  were  true.  The  balloon  hoax,  for 
example,  an  account  of  a  journey  performed  by  bal 
loon  from  an  estate  in  North  Wales  to  Charleston, 
was  published  in  the  "  New  York  Sun  "  under  sen 
sational  head-lines  and  was  for  a  time  actually 
believed.  Poe  delighted  in  mystifications  of  this 
sort,  and  diligently  read  scientific  works  in  order 


244    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

to  give  an  air  of  probability  to  what  he  wrote. 
"  The  Adventures  of  Hans  Pfaal "  is  an  account  of 
a  journey  to  the  moon  in  a  balloon.  "Von  Kempe- 
len  and  his  Discovery"  is  a  feigned  account  of  the 
discovery  of  the  philosopher's  stone,  by  which  lead 
may  be  turned  into  gold.  "The  Manuscript  Found 
in  a  Bottle"  is  the  story  of  a  sailor  who  was  storm- 
tossed  from  his  own  ship  to  a  phantom  ship  and 
went  down  in  a  whirlpool  near  the  south  pole. 
The  theme  of  another  tale,  entitled  "The  Descent 
into  the  Maelstrom,"  is  sufficiently  indicated  by  the 
title.  "The  Narrative  of  Arthur  Gordon  Pym  "  is 
the  story  of  the  horrible  adventures  that  befell  a 
shipwrecked  crew  after  mutiny  among  the  sailors. 
Cannibalism  and  its  horrors,  a  ship  with  putrescent 
corpses  floating  upon  the  waste  of  waters,  are 
some  of  the  loathsome  incidents  with  which  the 
story  is  crowded.  All  the  wonderful  scientific  dis 
coveries  and  inventions  of  the  age  give  him  hints  for 
the  "  Thousand  and  Second  Tale  of  Scheherazade. " 
"The  Gold  Bug"  is  the  account  of  the  discovery  of 
Captain  Kidd's  treasure  under  a  tulip-tree,  by  means 
of  the  chance  finding  of  a  piece  of  parchment  on 
which  the  hiding-place  of  the  treasure  was  indicated 
by  cipher.  Poe  had  a  remarkable  talent  for  decipher 
ing  cryptographs,  and  a  great  many  specimens  of 
cipher  writing  were  sent  him  to  be  read.  ]\Jystery 
in  any  direction  fascinated  him,  because  it  brought 
into  action  his  wonderful  analytic  skill.'  The  story 
of  the  "  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue "  reveals  the 
analytic  power  of  a  young  Frenchman,  who  dis 
covers  that  the  perpetrator  of  a  horrible  murder  in 
Paris  is  an  orang-outang  escaped  from  a  Maltese 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  245 

sailor.  This  young  Frenchman's  morbid  love  of 
darkness  is  illustrated  in  a  remarkable  manner.  He 
closes  all  his  shutters  in  daylight,  draws  the  cur 
tains,  and  lights  candles;  but  when  real  night  comes, 
he  opens  his  shutters,  puts  out  his  candles,  and 
sallies  forth  for  a  walk. 

This  trait  is  admirably  symbolic  of  Poe's  own 
genius.  Turning  away  from  the  bright,  wholesome 
sunshine  of  life,  scornful  of  all  that  gives  warmth, 
color  and  joy  to  it,  he  gropes  in  the  chill  gloom  of 
night.  He  burrows  into  the  cryptlike  recesses  of 
the  human  heart  and  draws  forth  its  mould  and 
decay.  To  do  him  justice,  he  leaves  untouched  its 
grosser  foulness  and  corruption.  A  fine  sense  of 
decency,  the  instincts  of  a  gentleman,  kept  him 
clean  of  the  stain  of  obscenity.  "  Let  what  is  to  be 
said,  be  said  plainly.  True;  but  let  nothing  vulgar 
be  ever  said  or  conceived ! "  he  once  wrote  of  a  poet 
who  had  offended  decency;  and  he  followed  his  own 
dictum. 

"The  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget"  is  the  unravelling 
of  another  murder  case,  the  particulars  of  which 
were  actually  reported  in  the  daily  papers  at  the 
time  in  which  it  was  written.  "The  .Purloined 
Letter"  is  another  clever  detective  story.  In  this 
story  Foe  denies  that  mathematical  studies  develop 
the  reasoning  faculties.  "Mathematical  truths," 
he  says,  "are  only  truths  within  the  limits  of  rela 
tion,"  "finite  truths,"  as  it  were. 

"  The  Black  Cat "  is  the  story  of  the  crimes  of  a 
man  driven  insane  by  the  intemperate  use  of  alcohol. 
The  criminal  relates  his  own  story,  and  it  is  remark 
able  for  its  faithful  portrayal  of  the  growth  of  crimi- 


246    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

nal  impulse  in  association  with  the  ruin  of  the 
mind.  The  dominance  of  a  fixed  idea;  the  help 
lessness  of  a  broken  will  in  the  storm  of  wayward 
and  morbid  impulses;  the  frightful  change  of  all  the 
sweet  affections  of  the  heart  into  cruel  hatred;  the 
apathy  following  the  commission  of  the  crime; 
the  hideous  vanity  that  exults  in  its  perpetration  are 
well  known  to  pathologists.  Another  story  of  a 
deliberately  planned  murder  under  the  dominion  of 
a  wicked  impulse,  and  then  a  confession  of  the 
crime  induced  by  an  equally  irresistible  impulse,  is 
related  in  "The  Imp  of  the  Perverse."  In  this 
story  Poe  says :  — 

"  I  am  not  more  certain  that  I  breathe  than  that  the  as 
surance  of  the  wrong  or  error  of  any  action  is  often  the  one 
unconquerable  force  which  impels  us,  and  alone  impels  us,  to 
its  prosecution.  Nor  will  this  overwhelming  tendency  to  do 
wrong  for  the  wrong's  sake  admit  of  analysis  or  resolution 
to  ulterior  elements.  It  is  a  radical,  a  primitive  impulse, 
elementary." 

This  statement  is  made  in  ignorance  of  the  fact 
that  though  such  impulses  to  perversity  undeniably 
exist,  they  do  not  accompany  a  sound  and  mature 
organization.  They  indicate  disease  or  weakness, 
and  accompany  the  morbid  conditions  of  hysteria 
and  insanity,  or  the  weakness  of  immaturity  and 
ignorance.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that 
morality  is  simply  obedience  to  law  recognized  or 
unrecognized.  Organic  beings  are  no  more  exempt 
than  the  universe  from  the  dominion  of  law.  All 
right  living,  all  individual  and  social  progress 
depend  upon  conformity  to  law,  not  caprice.  Says 
Maudsley :  — 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  247 

"  Good  moral  feeling  is  to  be  looked  upon  as  an  essential 
part  of  a  sound  and  rightly  developed  character  in  the  pres 
ent  state  of  human  evolution  in  civilized  lands:  its  acqui 
sition  is  the  condition  of  development  in  the  progress 
of  humanization.  Whoever  is  destitute  of  it  is  to  that  ex 
tent  a  defective  being;  he  marks  the  beginning  of  race 
degeneracy." 

In  "Berenice,"  a  story  of  catalepsy  and  mono 
mania,  Poe  makes  his  hero  say:  "In  the  strange 
anomaly  of  my  existence,  feelings  with  me  had 
never  been  of  the  heart,  and  my  passions  always  were 
of  the  mind."  This  anomalous  trait  is  curiously 
characteristic  of  Rousseau  and  his  school,  of  whom 
it  was  said  that  they  had  no  real  or  lasting  attach 
ment  to  any  but  the  persons  of  their  own  invention, 
nor  sincere  affection  for  anything  but  nature,  in 
whose  name  they  adored  their  own  moods  and 
feelings. 

Loathsome  stories  of  metempsychosis,  mesmerism, 
and  pestilence  are  to  be  found  among  other  tales 
that  Poe  has  written ;  but  enough  has  been  said  of 
his  fictitious  work  to  show  its  pathological  charac 
ter,  and  to  suggest  that  the  intellect  which  could 
delight  in  and  produce  it  was  perilously  near  the 
morbid  state  it  could  so  faithfully  depict.  He,  too, 
knew  that  nameless  terror  that  haunted  Roderick 
Usher.  We  know  from  Mrs.  Clemm  that  he  had  a 
childish  fear  of  the  dark,  and  would  not  stay  alone 
at  night.  With  him,  too,  feelings  were  of  the  mind, 
not  the  heart.  Outside  of  his  narrow  household  no 
tie  of  love  or  gratitude  could  bind  him  long.  And 
for  this  reason,  Lowell,  whom  he  attacked  after 
valuable  services  rendered  him,  said  that  he  "was 


248    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

wholly  lacking  in  that  element  of  manhood  which 
for  want  of  a  better  name  we  call  character.".  He 
was  untruthful  and  the  slave  of  his  impulses,  But 
while  this  admission  is  made,  the  pity  of  it  must 
silence  censure  on  the  lips  of  every  generous  reader. 
When  we  know  why  the  rose  has  its  canker  and  the 
lily  its  worm,  we  shall  know  why  genius,  the  fairest 
gift  to  man,  may  be  poisoned  in  its  sources,  and 
then  we  may  pronounce  judgment. 

As  a  critic,  Poe  has  left  no  work  valuable  in 
itself,  —  partly  because  he  chose  especially  to  review 
the  works  of  those  of  his  contemporaries  who 
deserved  to  be  forgotten,  and  partly  because  he 
misconceived  the  true  spirit  of  criticism.  He  be 
lieved  that  criticism  should  busy  itself  with  defects, 
not  excellences,  because  excellence  is  not  excellence 
if  it  requires  pointing  out.  On  the  contrary,  the 
chief  business  of  criticism  is  not  to  point  out  defects, 
but  to  point  out  excellences,  on  the  principle  that  a 
beautiful  object  is  more  worthy  of  attention  than  an 
ugly  one,  and  that  perfect  taste  is  cultivated  by  the 
study  of  what  is  beautiful  and  not  of  what  is  ugly. 
It  is  not  true  that  excellence  is  not  excellence  if  it 
needs  pointing  out.  The  perfect  taste  that  can 
discern  beauty  in  simplicity  and  strength  in  quiet 
harmony,  is  the  fruit  of  long  and  patient  training, 
and  they  are  few  who  acquire  it.  The  uneducated 
taste  delights  in  gaudy  coloring  and  profuse  orna 
mentation,  and  mistakes  convulsive  activity  for 
strength.  This  is  the  taste  of  the  vast  majority  of 
readers,  to  correct  which  by  dwelling  upon  the  beauty 
of  classic  models  is  the  chief  task  of  the  critic.  If 
it  is  none  the  less  his  duty  to  point  out  defects,  it 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  249 

is  still  a  secondary  duty,  because  the  mind  that  has 
once  apprehended  a  type  of  ideal  beauty  has  within 
itself  a  standard  by  which  to  measure  what  is  pre 
sented  to  its  consideration. 

But  Poe's  criticism  was  not  based  upon  a  sincere 
wish  to  correct  public  taste  by  furnishing  it  with 
such  a  type.  There  was  more  of  perversity  than 
honesty  in  it,  and  it  consists  almost  wholly  of  cen 
sure  and  ridicule,  rarely  of  praise.  The  charge  of 
plagiarism  on  grounds  the  most  absurd  and  far 
fetched,  is  so  frequently  made  that  it  would  be 
laughable  if  it  were  not  an  indication  of  lamentable 
weakness.  But  Poe  was  by  no  means  devoid  of  a 
natural  feeling  for  what  is  strong  and  fine  in  litera 
ture,  and  no  clamor  of  popular  applause  deafened 
him  to  the  false  ring  of  what  would  fain  pass  for 
sterling  coin.  This  critical  instinct  and  his  abso 
lute  fearlessness  might  have  made  him  a  power  in 
American  literature  at  a  time  when  real  criticism 
did  not  exist  in  it.  But  unfortunately  his  distrust, 
or  his  envy,  of  popularity  degenerated  into  a  belief 
that  a  popular  writer  was  necessarily  a  worthless 
writer,  and  he  criticised  indiscriminately  in  accord 
ance  with  this  opinion.  He  attacked  Longfellow 
and  Lowell,  and  wrote  always  with  rude  scorn  of 
the  Transcendentalists,  — or  "muddle-pates,"  as  he 
called  them,  —  spoke  contemptuously  of  Carlyle, 
but  praised  Hawthorne,  whom  the  public  ignored, 
though  he  denied  him  originality  and  likened  him 
to  Tieck.  Of  Wordsworth  he  could  make  nothing ; 
but  he  revered  Coleridge,  and  thought  Tennyson 
"the  noblest  poet  that  ever  lived." 

Poe  was  guided  in  his  criticisms  by  a  few  prin- 


250    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

ciples  afterward  summed  up  in  his  essays,  "The 
Philosophy  of  Composition"  and  "The  Poetic  Prin 
ciple."  These  critical  principles  deserve  examina 
tion  in  so  much  as  they  help  us  to  an  estimate  of 
his  own  work,  from  which  he  evidently  deduced 
them. 

The  object  of  poetry  he  conceives  to  be  beauty, 
not  truth,  and  to  give  pleasure,  not  instruction.  An 
epic  or  a  long  poem  is  "a  flat  contradiction  in 
terms,"  because  "all  high  excitements  are  neces 
sarily  transient.  Thus  a  long  poem  is  a  paradox." 
For  the  same  reason  he  contends  that  the  short 
prose  tale  is  superior  to  the  long  work  of  fiction. 
Music  he  called  "  the  perfection  of  the  soul  or  idea  of 
poetry,"  and  affirms  it  of  "so  vast  a  moment  to  poesy 
as  never  to  be  neglected  by  him  who  is  truly  poeti 
cal.  "  As  for  truth,  that  is  altogether  of  minor  impor 
tance.  "That  the  chief  merit  of  a  picture  is  its 
truth  is  an  assertion  deplorably  erroneous.  ...  If 
truth  is  the  highest  aim  of  either  painting  or  poesy, 
then  Jan  Steen  was  a  greater  artist  than  Angelo, 
and  Crabbe  is  a  more  noble  poet  than  Milton."  Of 
beauty  he  says  that,  "whatever  its  kind,  in  its 
supreme  development  it  invariably  excites  the 
sensitive  soul  to  tears.  Melancholy  is  therefore 
the  most  legitimate  of  all  poetical  tones."  He 
declares  humor  to  be  "  directly  antagonistic  to  that 
which  is  the  soul  of  the  muse  proper." 

Let  us  examine  these  principles,  and  learn  in 
what  degree  they  underlie  the  recognized  master 
pieces  of  art.  To  say  that  a  long  poem  cannot  exist 
because  the  elevating  excitement  which  a  true  poem 
creates  cannot  be  sustained  for  any  length  of  time, 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  251 

is  to  confound  a  work  of  art  with  a  condition  of 
mental  susceptibility.  It  is  equivalent  to  saying 
that  the  pictures  in  an  art-gallery  are  no  longer 
works  of  art  because  the  eye  wearies  of  pictures 
before  it  has  seen  them  all,  or  that  the  myriad- 
starred  sky  is  not  a  sublime  spectacle  because  it 
arches  above  us  night  after  night,  and  the  wonder 
of  it  is  lost  in  familiarity,  —  just  as  the  marvellous 
beauty  of  Alpine  sunsets  is  lost  on  the  eye  of  the 
peasant  that  looks  on  them  daily.  The  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey,  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  the  "  Divine  Comedy" 
are  none  the  less  poems  because  they  cannot  be 
read  at  a  sitting. 

Moreover,  the  idea  that  a  poem  is  of  necessity  the 
production  of  "  a  high  excitement  necessarily  tran 
sient"  is  a  very  false  one.  Poe  himself,  in  his 
account  of  the  composition  of  the  "Raven,"  the 
most  successful  of  his  poems,  shows  that  it  was  not 
dashed  off  at  a  heat,  but  was  the  slow  and  labored 
result  of  deliberate  and  logical  thought.  He  care 
fully  selected  the  theme  and  refrain,  aiming  from 
the  first  at  a  certain  effect.  The  stanza  beginning 
"  Prophet,  said  I,  thing  of  evil ! "  was  written  first, 
to  establish  a  climax.  His  own  verses  were  not, 
therefore,  the  spontaneous  outpourings  of  his  heart, 
the  musical  products  of  high  and  transient  excite 
ments;  they  were  fantastic  compositions  deliber 
ately  planned  and  composed  after  set  theories. 

Sidney  Lanier,  the  young  Georgia  poet  and  critic, 
who  died  in  1881  with  half  the  music  in  him  yet 
unuttered,  took  pains  to  teach  his  hearers,  in  his 
Johns  Hopkins  lectures,  that  poetry  is  not  the  prod 
uct  of  a  frenzy,  but  of  the  sanest,  coolest  wisdom; 


252    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

that  it  is  not  at  all  antagonistic  to  science,  but 
draws  its  deepest  inspirations  from  the  profoundest 
knowledge.  "Genius,  the  great  artist,"  he  says, 
"  never  works  in  the  frantic  vein,  vulgarly  supposed ; 
a  large  part  of  the  work  of  the  poet,  for  example,  is 
selecting;  a  dozen  ideas  in  a  dozen  forms  throng  to 
his  brain  at  once;  he  must  choose  the  best;  even  in 
the  extremest  heat  and  sublimity  of  his  raptust  he 
must  preserve  a  godlike  calm.  .  .  .  '  He  who  will 
not  answer  to  the  rudder  must  answer  to  the  rocks. '  " 
Poe  himself,  when  it  answered  his  purpose  in  criti 
cal  articles,  declared  that  poetry  has  nothing  to  do 
with  profound  emotion.  "We  agree,"  he  says, 
"with  Coleridge,  that  poetry  and  passion  are  dis 
cordant  ; "  and  elsewhere  he  repeats  :  "  It  is  precisely 
this  unpassionate  emotion  which  is  the  limit  of  the 
true  poetical  art.  Passion  proper  and  poesy  are  dis 
cordant.  Poetry  in  elevating  tranquillizes  the  soul. 
With  the  heart  it  has  nothing  to  do." 

But  if  we  accept  his  other  theory,  which  certainly 
contradicts  this  one,  how  are  we  to  classify  the  beau 
tiful  "  Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard  "  which  Gray 
was  so  many  years  in  writing,  or  that  exquisite 
series  of  pictures,  reflections,  and  sentiments  which 
makes  up  Goldsmith's  "  Deserted  Village  "  and  "  The 
Traveller,"  Goethe's  "Hermann  and  Dorothea,"  or 
Whittier's  "  Snowbound  "  ?  Were  these  the  products 
of  high  and  transient  excitements,  and  do  they 
require  a  similar  state  of  mind  for  their  enjoyment? 
To  apply  such  a  test  as  this  to  poetry  would  exclude 
from  that  title  nearly  all  the  verse  that  ever  was 
written. 

Poe's  argument  for  the  superiority  of   the   short 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  253 

prose  tale  over  the  longer  work  of  fiction  is  equally 
indefensible.  Admirable  as  the  short  prose  tale 
may  be,  it  reveals  neither  the  imaginative  vigor, 
power  of  reasoning,  versatility,  nor  knowledge  of 
the  world  implied  in  a  long  work  of  fiction  of  the 
highest  type.  Says  the  great  French  critic,  Edmond 
Scherer : — 

"  A  well-written  novel  is  a  biography.  We  witness  the 
development  of  a  principal  character  whom  the  incidents  of 
the  story  but  serve  to  bring  out  into  relief.  The  chief  char 
acter  alternately  rules  and  submits  to  the  events  around 
which  are  grouped  other  characters  who  influence  his  des 
tiny.  Art  in  this  species  of  writing  consists  in  giving  to  the 
invention  of  facts  and  the  portrayal  of  character  all  the  variety 
that  is  compatible  with  biographical  unity.  The  more  varied 
and  interesting  the  details  in  themselves  thus  revealing  the 
author's  inventive  resources  and  the  correctness  of  his  obser 
vation,  the  more  the  characters  will  be  distinguished,  —  but 
always  on  the  condition  that  these  details  are  subordinated 
to  the  aim,  which  is,  I  repeat,  the  exhibition  of  one  sovereign 
personality." 

Now,  this  development  of  character,  this  reaction 
of  thought  and  feeling  upon  the  destiny  of  a  human 
being,  requires  for  its  exhibition  more  than  the 
narrow  limits  of  a  brief  tale;  hence  the  necessary 
superiority  of  the  longer  work  of  fiction.  Compare, 
for  example,  Dickens's  "Christmas  Stories"  and 
"  Sketches  "  with  "  David  Copperfield  "  or  "  Martin 
Chuzzlewit;"  George  Eliot's  "Clerical  Tales"  with 
"  Middlemarch "  or  "Adam  Bede;"  Hawthorne's 
"Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse"  with  "The  Scarlet 
Letter"  and  "The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables." 


254    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

The  assertion  that  truth  is  not  the  aim  of  art, 
that  its  sole  object  is  beauty,  not  truth,  and  the 
effect  it  produces  pleasure,  not  instruction,  is 
equivalent  to  saying  that  beauty  is  not  truth  nor 
instruction  capable  of  giving  pleasure.  On  the 
contrary,  truth  is  the  vital  principle  of  beauty,  and 
the  highest  pleasures  are  those  in  which  the  intellect 
is  active,  not  passive.  Not  that  truth  is  always 
beautiful ;  there  are  ugly  truths  as  well  as  beautiful 
ones.  A  rubbish  heap  is  as  real  as  a  fine  cathedral, 
but  it  is  not  beautiful;  a  rose  is  as  real  as  an 
unsightly  weed,  but  the  weed  cannot  give  the  eye 
the  same  pleasure.  Sin  is  as  real  as  virtue,  but  the 
sage  mind  can  find  no  delight  in  it.  The  truths 
that  Jan  Steen  and  Crabbe  chose  to  portray  are  the 
truths  of  the  rubbish  heap  and  the  weed.  The 
truths  that  Milton  and  Angelo  chose  to  depict  are 
the  higher  truths  of  harmony,  design,  and  beauty. 
The  highest  art  instinctively  makes  this  selection. 
But  there  is  still  another  beauty,  —  the  beauty  of 
mere  color  and  form,  the  beauty  that  appeals.  to_  the 
senses  wholly, — and  this  is  the  beauty  of  which 
Poe  speaks,  and  of  which  Gustave  Flaubert  said  in 
his  youth :  — 

"  For  my  part,  I  admire  tinsel  as  much  as  gold.  The 
poetry  of  tinsel  is  much  superior  in  that  it  is  sad.  For  me 
there  is  nothing  in  the  world  except  beautiful  verses,  well- 
tuned  harmonies,  resonant  phrases,  glorious  sunsets,  moon 
light,  colored  paintings,  antique  marbles,  and  shapely  heads. 
I  would  sooner  have  been  Talma  than  Mirabeau,  because 
he  lived  in  a  sphere  of  purer  beauty.  Caged  birds  stir  my 
compassion  as  much  as  enslaved  peoples.  In  all  politics 
there  is  only  one  thing  I  understand,  and  that  is  revolt." 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  255 

The  concluding  sentiments  of  this  confession  are 
the  natural  result  of  its  first  admissions.  The  wor 
ship  of  beauty  entirely  for  itself,  dissociated  from 
any  sense  of  design  or  regard  for  essentials  and 
ethical  value,  inevitably  degrades  the  worshipper. 
He  loses  all  sense  of  values ;  surfaces  content  him ; 
he  becomes  the  vulgar  victim  of  show  and  glare,  and, 
like  the  savage,  he  would  exchange  an  unpolished 
jewel  for  a  glittering  glass  bead.  He  shuns  the 
sweet,  austere  lessons  of  life,  and  steeps  himself  in 
sensual  indulgence.  He  talks  much  of  "art  for 
art's  sake,"  by  which  he  means  simply  delight  for 
the  senses  and  an  opiate  for  the  intellect.  The  art 
that  lasts,  the  art  that  gave  renown  to  Greece  and 
Italy,  the  art  that  makes  the  literature  of  England 
her  consummate  gift  to  the  world,  is  not  the  art  of  sur 
faces,  but  the  art  of  the  centres  of  life  and  thought. 

"  Not  from  a  vain  or  shallow  thought, 
His  awful  Jove  young  Phidias  wrought. 
Never  from  lips  of  cunning  fell 
The  thrilling  Delphic  oracle  ;   * 
Out  from  the  heart  of  nature  rolled 
The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old; 
The  litanies  of  nations  came, 
Like  the  volcano's  tongue  of  flame, 
Up  from  the  burning  core  below,  — 
The  canticles  of  love  and  woe ; 
The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome 
And  groined  the  aisles  of  Christian  Rome 
Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity  : 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free  ; 
He  builded  better  than  he  knew, 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew." 

The   idea   that  beauty  in  its  supreme  development 
awakens  melancholy  in  the  sensitive   soul  may  be 


256    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

true  if  the  sensitiveness  is  morbid,  but  if  it  is 
healthy  in  character,  the  emotion  excited  is  exactly 
the  contrary ;  it  is  that  of  pure  exhilaration  or  deep 
joy  that  may  sometimes  lie  close  to  tears,  but  they 
are  tears  of  gratitude  and  reverence,  not  tears  of 
depression.  There  is  no  surer  sign  of  a  healthy 
organization  than  its  capacity  for  joy,  and  art  in  its 
highest  manifestation  appeals  to  this  capacity. 

We  have  now  arrived  at  some  definite  conclusions 
which  help  us  to  judge  Poe's  work  as  an  artist.  No 
poet,  not  even  Gray,  ever  went  to  the  tomb  with  a 
slenderer  bunch  of  immortelles  in  his  hand.  When 
six  or  seven  short  poems  are  named,  we  have  given 
in  his  title  to  remembrance.  These  poems  are 
"The  Raven,"  "The  Bells,"  "The  Haunted  Palace," 
"The  Conqueror  Worm,"  "The  City  in  the  Sea," 
"To  One  in  Paradise,"  and  "Annabel  Lee."  Per 
fect  in  their  kind,  they  belong,  however,  to  the 
"poetry  of  tinsel,"  which  depends  for  its  charm  on 
melody  and  a  vague  suggestion  of  perishable  beauty 
that  excites  a  pleasing  melancholy.  But  the  tinsel 
is  hopelessly  tarnished  in  such  absurd  jingles  as 
"Ulalume,"  where  the  grief  is  so  evidently  an  affec 
tation,  the  choice  of  expression  so  evidently  in 
tended  to  be  effective,  that  the  simplest  reader 
cannot  be  deceived  by  it.  He  knows  that  the  pallor 
of  the  hero  is  the  pallor  of  powder,  and  his  horror  a 
theatrical  pose. 

Poe's  poetical  world  was  a  fantastic  dream  world. 
He  sympathized  neither  with  love  as  men  ordinarily 
feel  it,  with  friendship,  domestic  joys,  nor  delight 
in  natural  beauty.  He  shunned  these  grand  com 
monplaces  in  which  the  great  poets  find  their  in- 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  257 

spiration.  His  love  of  the  odd  and  fantastic  as  well 
as  the  musical  is  shown  in  his  choice  of  names,  — 
Ligeia,  Ulalume,  Lalage,  lanthe,  Morella,  Lenore. 
He  cared  more  that  his  verses  should  have  the 
charm  of  melancholy  and  novelty  than  of  thought. 
But  that  he  knew  the  value  of  thought  is  shown  in 
his  criticism  of  an  unfortunate  poet,  whose  sounding 
verses  he  reduced  to  plain  prose  in  order  to  exhibit 
their  nonsense.  How  many  of  his  own  poems  would 
bear  the  same  proof  of  their  value? 

Poe's  first  work  as  a  poet  was  written  in  evident 
imitation  of  Moore's  Oriental  poems.  As  Poe  had 
not  yet  concluded  a  long  poem  to  be  a  paradox,  he 
wrote  long  poems,  with  a  result  that  certainly  favored 
his  theory  and  probably  gave  birth  to  it. 

Poe's  tales  do  not  rank  among  works  of  the 
highest  art,  because  they  do  not  embody  the  most 
beautiful  forms  of  truth.  They  exhibit  no  char 
acter  drawing,  no  elevating  or  enlivening  incident. 
Their  truths  are  the  ugly  realities  of  madness  and 
crime.  Their  lessons  are  in  manner  and  subject 
those  of  the  Spartan  helot  to  his  master's  sons. 

As  for  Poe's  criticism,  it  does  not  reach  the 
highest  order  of  criticism,  because  it  does  not  recog 
nize  the  ethical  value  of  art. 

Poe's  last  work,  "Eureka,  an  Essay  on  the  Mate 
rial  and  Spiritual  Universe,"  can  hardly  be  said  to 
be  necessary  to  a  complete  study  of  the  poet.  It 
was  written  in  the  decline  of  his  powers  and  bears 
evidence  of  the  fact.  But  it  is  a  curious  instance  of 
the  mind's  persistence  in  a  given  direction  while  at 
the  same  time  yielding  to  the  influence  of  its  era. 
Poe,  who  loved  mystery  and  sought  its  solution  in 

17 


258     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

various  fields,  audaciously  attempts  in  this  essay  to 
solve  the  great  mystery  of  the  origin  of  the  universe. 
Contrary  to  all  his  theories  of  music  in  poetry,  he 
called  this  work  a  poem,  and  it  was  written  in  prose/ 
Moreover,  it  is  long,  not  short;  and  so  far  from  aim-N 
ing  simply  at  a  reproduction  of  beauty  according  to 
his  theory  of  art,  instruction  is  its  real  aim,  although 
he  declares  the  contrary,  and  is  didactic  in  the  dry- 
est  of  all  possible  ways,' — the  metaphysical  way. 
For  what  is  still  more  singular  in  this  utter  repudia 
tion  in  practice  of  his  cherished  theories,  he  adopted 
in  his  reasoning  the  method  of  the  Transcendental- 
ists  whom  he  had  so  bitterly  ridiculed.  The  dedi 
cation  of  "  Eureka  "  will  sufficiently  testify  to  this :  — 

"To  the  few  who  love  me  and  whom  I  love,  to  those 
who  feel  rather  than  to  those  who  think,  —  to  the  dreamers 
and  those  who  put  faith  in  dreams  as  the  only  realities,  —  I 
offer  this  book  of  truths,  not  in  its  character  of  truth-teller, 
but  for  the  beauty  abounding  in  its  truths  constituting  it  true. 
To  these  I  present  the  composition  as  an  art  product  alone, 
let  us  say  as  a  Romance,  or  if  I  be  not  urging  too  lofty  a 
claim,  as  a  Poem.  What  I  here  propound  is  true :  therefore 
it  cannot  die  ;  it  will  rise  again  to  the  life  everlasting.  Never 
theless,  it  is  as  a  poem  only  that  I  wish  this  work  to  be  judged 
after  I  am  dead." 

The  book  opens  with  a  silly  punning  on  the  names 
of  Aristotle  and  of  Bacon,  whose  system  of  arriving 
at  knowledge  Poe  attempts  to  demolish,  while  he 
asserts  the  superiority  of  his  own,  —  namely,  the 
Transcendental  method  of  trusting  to  the  untram 
melled  intuitions  or  imaginations  of  the  soul.  His 
theory  of  the  existence  of  the  universe  in  its  present 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  259 

form  is  indebted  to  La  Place's  theory  for  its  central 
conception,  while  his  theory  of  man's  relation  to  the 
universe  is  equally  indebted  to  the  teachings  of 
Hindoo  philosophy;  and  why  he  should  have  pro 
claimed  himself  the  discoverer  of  a  new  truth  in  his 
promulgation  of  well-known  theories  it  would  be 
hard  to  tell. 

But  with  all  his  defects  and  limitations,  with  all 
his  unhappy  mistakes  so  tragically  expiated,  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  this  man  did  have  the  gift  of 
genius,  if  not  in  its  highest  and  purest  manifesta 
tions,  at  least  in  such  manner  as  to  give  him  a  place 
among  the  immortals. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

OLIVER  WENDELL   HOLMES  (1809-1894) 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  poet,  essayist, 
novelist,  was  born  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
on  the  twenty-ninth  of  August,  1809.  He  was  fond 
of  saying  that  the  year  of  his  birth  was  that  which 
also  gave  to  the  world  Gladstone,  Tennyson,  Lord 
Houghton,  Darwin,  and  Abraham  Lincoln,  —  making 
it  seem  "  like  an  honor  to  have  come  into  the  world  in 
such  company."  He  also  liked  to  observe  that  just 
a  hundred  years  before  him,  Samuel  Johnson  was 
born ;  and  every  year  he  followed,  with  a  curiosity 
quickened  by  sympathy,  the  events  of  Johnson's  life 
as  narrated  by  Boswell,  to  see,  as  his  biographer, 
John  T.  Morse,  remarks,  "  what  Johnson  was  about  in 
that  year  of  his  age  to  which  he  himself  had  then 
come." 

Holmes's  mother,  Sarah  Wendell,  was  a  little  woman 
of  great  vivacity  and  intelligence,  and  lived  until  her 
ninety-third  year.  Her  ancestors  were  Dutch,  while 
those  of  his  father,  the  Reverend  Abiel  Holmes,  were 
English. 

Young  Oliver  was  a  very  human,  lively  boy,  taking 
more  pleasure  in  a  jack-knife  and  a  gun  than  in 
books,  of  which  his  father's  library  contained  between 
one  and  two  thousand.  He  says  he  read  few  books 
through,  but  read  in  many  of  them,  —  a  practice  he 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  261 

kept  up  through  life.  His  father  was  a  Congrega 
tional  clergyman,  and  from  the  frequent  presence  of 
ministers  as  guests  in  the  household,  the  bright  boy 
had  a  lively  sense  of  the  depressing  influence  of  min 
isterial  gravity,  and  in  later  days,  contrasting  the 
genial  clergymen  of  his  acquaintance  with  their  oppo- 
sites  of  his  boyish  recollections,  he  says  in  the  "  Poet 
at  the  Breakfast-Table  "  :  — 

"  What  a  debt  we  owe  to  our  friends  of  the  left  centre, 
the  Brooklyn  and  the  Park  Street  and  the  Summer  Street 
ministers :  good,  wholesome,  sound-bodied,  sane-minded, 
cheerful- spirited  men,  who  have  taken  the  place  of  those 
wailing  poitrinaires  with  their  bandanna  handkerchiefs  round 
their  meagre  throats,  and  a  funeral  service  in  their  forlorn 
physiognomies  :  I  might  have  been  a  minister  myself,  for 
aught  I  know,  if  this  clergyman  had  not  looked  and  talked  so 
like  an  undertaker." 

As  it  was,  the  boy  early  revolted  from  dogma, 
shrewdly  suspecting  human  ingenuity  rather  than 
divine  benevolence  underlying  its  formulas ;  yet  ter 
rified  in  the  dark  by  a  vague,  nameless  horror  born  of 
the  superstitions  of  the  time,  and  from  that  terror 
developing  a  hatred  of  all  books  that  owe  their  origin 
to  harsh  creeds,  such  as  Jonathan  Edwards's  "  Ser 
mons,"  Bunyan's  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  and  Dante's 
"  Inferno,"  of  whose  spirit  he  speaks  as  "  the  hideous- 
ness,  the  savageness  of  that  mediaeval  nightmare." 
Of  Jonathan  Edwards  he  says  with  harsh  truth:  — 

"The  practical  effect  of  Edwards's  teaching  about  the 
relations  of  God  and  man  has  bequeathed  a  lesson  not  to  be 
forgotten.  A  revival  in  which  the  majority  of  his  converts 
fell  away;  nervous  disorders  of  all  sorts,  insanity,  suicide 


262     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

among  the  rewards  of  his  eloquence  ;  Religion  dressed  up  in 
fine  phrase  and  made  much  of,  while  Morality,  her  Poor 
Relation,  was  getting  hard  treatment  at  the  hands  of  the 
young  persons  who  had  grown  up  under  the  reign  of  terror 
of  the  Northampton  pulpit ;  alienation  of  the  hearts  of  the 
people  to  such  an  extent  as  is  now  rarely  seen  in  the  bitterest 
quarrels  between  pastor  and  flock,  —  if  this  was  a.  successful 
ministry,  what  disaster  would  constitute  a  failure  ?  " 

This  feeling  of  strong  antagonism  to  creeds,  of 
horror  at  any  cramping  of  the  soul  to  make  it  fit  a 
set  theological  mould,  appears  in  all  Holmes's  prose 
works,  but  it  began  in  his  boyhood  as  he  sat,  a  silent 
but  rebellious  and  uncomfortable  listener,  to  the  "  wail 
ing  poitrinaires"  around  his  father's  dinner-table. 

At  fifteen  he  was  sent  to  Phillips  Academy, 
Andover.  In  1825  he  went  to  Harvard,  and  was 
graduated  from  there  four  years  later.  He  then 
studied  law  for  a  year,  but  dropped  the  law  to  take 
up  medicine.  He  had  already  written  verses  of  a 
humorous  character  for  a  college  periodical,  but  his 
first  poem  of  any  particular  merit  was  the  stirring 
"  Old  Ironsides,"  written  when  he  was  twenty-one. 
An  order  had  been  given  for  the  destruction  of  the 
old  frigate  "  Constitution,"  then  lying  disabled  in  the 
Charlestown  navy-yard.  The  ringing  lines  "  Ay,  tear 
her  tattered  ensign  down !  "  saved  the  old  ship,  and 
first  carried  the  name  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
beyond  the  college  circle  of  his  native  town. 

In  1833  Holmes  sailed  for  Europe  to  continue  his 
medical  studies  in  Paris.  He  took  lodgings  in  the 
Latin  Quarter,  attended  hospitals  and  lecture-rooms, 
studied  diligently,  and  wrote  home  that  he  had  fully 
learned  at  least  three  principles:  "not  to  take  author- 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  263 

ity  when  I  can  have  facts ;  not  to  guess  when  I  can 
know ;  not  to  think  a  man  must  take  physic  because 
he  is  sick."  But  while  pursuing  his  medical  studies, 
he  was  not  indifferent  to  the  means  of  general  cul 
ture  ;  and  in  urging  his  father  to  allow  him  to  prolong 
his  stay  abroad,  he  said,  "  Economy  in  one  sense  is 
too  expensive  for  a  student,"  and  used  his  vacations 
in  seeing  something  of  Europe.  He  took  a  run  into 
England,  and  in  London  heard  Carlyle's  brilliant 
friend,  Edward  Irving,  preach,  and  described  him  as 
a  "  black,  savage,  saturnine,  long-haired  Scotchman, 
with  a  most  Tyburn-looking  squint."  At  the  royal 
opera  he  saw  Victoria,  then  a  princess  of  fifteen,  "  a 
nice,  fresh-looking  girl,  blonde,  and  rather  pretty." 
In  1835  he  made  a  short  journey  into  Italy,  and  wrote 
with  enthusiasm  of  the  wonders  of  Rome. 

The  next  year  he  was  back  in  Boston,  and  had 
commenced  the  practice  of  medicine.  But  he  never 
became  a  brilliantly  successful  practitioner.  The  wit 
and  the  poet  were  uppermost  in  him  ;  his  social  gifts, 
his  gayety,  the  versatility  of  his  genius  were  prejudi 
cial  to  him  as  a  physician.  They  made  of  him  a  most 
charming  companion,  but  to  the  general  public  they 
hardly  seemed  compatible  with  the  grave  discharge 
of  duties  that  required  exhaustive  study  and  patient 
bedside  observation.  A  volume  of  lively  verses  that 
appeared  in  1836  did  not  increase  the  faith  of  the 
doubting  public  in  the  poet  physician ;  but  that  he 
could  also  write  a  valuable  medical  paper  was  proved 
by  his  winning  the  Boylston  prize  in  the  same  year, 
for  an  essay  on  "  Intermittent  Fever  in  New  England." 
The  next  year  he  was  appointed  professor  of  anat 
omy  at  Dartmouth  College. 


264    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

In  1840  Holmes  married  Amelia  Lee  Jackson,  an 
intelligent,  attractive  young  woman,  who  made  a 
happy  home  for  him.  Seven  years  later  he  was 
elected  to  the  chair  of  anatomy  and  physiology  in 
Harvard  University.  His  connection  with  this  uni 
versity  continued  for  thirty-five  years.  His  position 
was  a  difficult  and,  in  many  respects,  a  trying  one : 
he  was  assigned  the  fifth-hour  lecture,  beginning  at 
one  o'clock,  because  he  alone  could  hold  the  attention 
of  the  wearied  students  at  that  late  hour.  But  he  was 
eager,  ardent,  and  had  a  perennial  flow  of  youthful 
spirits.  He  clothed  his  instruction  in  the  language  of 
wit  and  sentiment,  and  charmed  while  he  informed. 
He  was  patient  with  dulness,  and  uniformly  addressed 
his  lectures  to  the  ordinary  intelligence  rather  than  to 
the  higher ;  feeling  sure  that  the  latter  can  make  its 
way,  but  that  the  former  needs  all  the  help  it  can  get, 
and  is  vastly  in  the  majority. 

In  1857  a  new  literary  magazine  was  founded  in  Bos 
ton,  and  named,  at  the  suggestion  of  Holmes,  "  The 
Atlantic  Monthly."  For  this  magazine  Holmes 
wrote  the  first  book  that  made  him  widely  known, 
"  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table."  This  was 
the  first  of  that  admirable  series  of  good  talk  known 
as  the  Breakfast-Table  series,  of  which  "  The  Pro 
fessor  at  the  Breakfast-Table"  followed  the  "  Auto 
crat  "  in  two  years,  appearing  in  1860;  and  twelve 
years  later,  "  The  Poet  at  the  Breakfast-Table "  was 
published.  In  the  mean  time  the  poet  and  essayist 
had  become  a  novelist  by  the  publication  of  "  Elsie 
Venner,"  in  1861,  and  "The  Guardian  Angel,"  six 
years  later.  A  life  of  Motley,  in  1878,  and  one  of 
Emerson,  in  1884,  were  followed,  in  1885,  by  another 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  265 

novel,  entitled  "  A  Mortal  Antipathy."  The  following 
year  Holmes  made  another  trip  to  Europe,  com 
memorating  the  event  in  a  chatty  record  entitled 
"  A  Hundred  Days  in  Europe." 

Holmes  was  now  an  old  man,  unless  we  apply  to 
him  his  own  lines  to  the  old  player :  — 

"  Call  him  not  old  whose  visionary  brain 
Holds  o'er  the  past  its  undivided  reign. 
For  him  in  vain  the  envious  seasons  roll 
Who  bears  eternal  sunshine  in  his  soul." 

Lowell,  who  saw  him  in  Europe*,  delighting  and  de 
lighted  with  everybody,  wrote  that  he  envied  him  the 
freshness  of  genius  that  made  him  take  "  as  keen  an 
interest  in  everything  as  he  would  have  done  at 
twenty."  The  rich  vein  of  talk  was  not  yet  ex 
hausted,  but  revealed  itself  again  in  his  last  volume, 
"Over  the  Teacups,"  published  in  1890. 

Holmes  was  troubled  with  asthma  a  great  part  of 
his  life ;  but  with  the  exception  of  a  natural  dimming 
of  sight  and  dulling  of  hearing,  his  old  age  was 
clouded  with  no  painful  or  humiliating  infirmity  ;  to 
the  last  day  of  his  life  he  was  up  and  about,  and  he 
died,  peacefully  sitting  in  his  chair,  on  the  seventh  of 
October,  1894. 

In  person,  Holmes  was  a  plain,  wiry  little  man,  about 
five  feet  five  inches  tall.  His  eyes  were  blue,  his  hair 
brown,  his  bright,  homely  face  full  of  shrewdness  and 
fun.  "  I  do  not  think  my  face  a  flattering  likeness  of 
myself,"  he  writes  humorously  to  a  friend  on  sending 
a  photograph ;  and  again  to  Lowell,  "  I  have  always 
considered  my  face  a  convenience  rather  than  an 
ornament."  Holmes  was  very  ingenious  with  his 


266     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

fingers,  and  invented  the  hand-stereoscope,  but  took 
out  no  patent  for  it.  He  liked  racing,  rowing,  and 
was  n't  above  taking  an  interest  in  pugilism  so  far  as 
admiration  of  physical  strength  and  skill  go.  He  had 
a  pronounced  taste  for  music,  and  once  tried  to  learn 
to  play  on  the  violin,  but  without  any  marked  suc 
cess.  He  loved  the  blue  hyacinth,  the  smell  of 
crushed  lilac  leaves,  had  a  veritable  passion  for  great 
trees,  and  used  to  visit  a  few  fine  old  big-trunked 
New  England  elms  with  as  great  an  enjoyment 
and  regularity  as  if  they  had  been  living  men  or 
women. 

Holmes  was  naturally  somewhat  of  an  aristocrat  in 
feeling,  preferring,  on  his  own  confession,  "  other 
things  being  equal,  a  man  of  family  traditions  and 
accumulative  humanities  of  at  least  four  or  five  gen 
erations."  "  I  go  for  the  man  with  the  gallery  of 
family  portraits,"  he  continues,  "  against  the  one  with 
the  twenty-five  cent  daguerreotype,  unless  I  find  out 
that  the  last  is  the  better  of  the  two."  That  "  blood 
will  tell  "  is  an  insistent  point  with  him  ;  it  crops  out 
all  through  his  novels,  and  in  his  frequently  asserted 
horror  in  one  form  or  another  of  those  mesalliances 
that  last  "  fifty  years  to  begin  with,  and  then  pass 
along  down  the  line  of  descent,  breaking  out  in  all 
manner  of  boorish  manifestations  of  feature  and  man 
ner."  But  he  believes  in  "  no  aristocracy  without 
pluck  in  its  backbone."  He  had  a  wide  and  eager 
intellectual  curiosity,  but  he  was  not  a  student  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  that  word.  "  My  nature,"  he  writes, 
"  is  to  snatch  at  all  the  fruits  of  knowledge,  and  take 
a  good  bite  out  of  the  sunny  side,  —  after  that  let  in 
the  pigs."  He  was  deeply  interested  in  his  pro- 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  267 

fession,  but  it  was  rather  because  of  its  psychological 
bearings  than  its  practical  results  as  an  art  of  healing. 
He  had  little  faith  in  taking  medicine,  though  that 
did  not  bring  him  any  nearer  the  Homeopathists,  for 
whom  he  had  great  contempt  as  logicians  and  prac 
titioners.  He  says  in  one  of  his  medical  essays :  — 

"Throw  out  opium,  which  the  Creator  himself  seems  to 
prescribe,  for  we  often  see  the  scarlet  poppy  growing  in  the 
cornfields  as  if  it  were  foreseen  that  wherever  there  is  hunger 
to  be  fed,  there  must  also  be  pain  to  be  soothed ;  throw  out 
a  few  specifics  which  our  art  did  not  discover  and  is  hardly 
needed  to  apply  ;  throw  out  wine,  which  is  a  food,  and  the 
vapors  which  produce  the  miracle  of  Anaesthesia,  and  I  firmly 
believe  that  if  the  whole  materia  medica,  as  now  used,  could 
be  sunk  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  it  would  be  all  the  better 
for  mankind,  —  and  all  the  worse  for  the  fishes.  .  .  .  But  if 
the  materia  medica  were  lost  overboard,  how  much  more 
pains  would  be  taken  in  ordering  all  the  circumstances  sur 
rounding  the  patient  (as  can  be  done  everywhere  out  of  the 
crowded  pauper  districts)  than  are  taken  now  by  too  many 
who  think  that  they  do  their  duty  and  earn  their  money  when 
they  write  a  recipe  for  a  patient  left  in  an  atmosphere  of 
domestic  malaria,  or  to  the  most  negligent  kind  of  nursing ! 
I  confess  that  I  should  think  my  chance  of  recovery  from  ill 
ness  less  with  Hippocrates  for  my  physician  and  Mrs.  Gamp 
for  my  nurse,  than  if  I  were  in  the  hands  of  Hahnemann 
himself,  with  Florence  Nightingale  or  good  Rebecca  Taylor 
to  care  for  me." 

The  volume  of  "  Medical  Essays  "  from  which  the 
above  extract  is  taken  amply  repays  reading,  but  it  is 
not  as  a  medical  writer  that  we  are  particularly  con 
cerned  with  Holmes,  nor  is  it  as  such  that  he  wished 
to  be  remembered.  He  once  wrote :  — 


268     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  If  I  should  confess  the  truth,  there  is  no  mere  earthly 
immortality  that  I  envy  so  much  as  the  poet's.  If  your 
name  is  to  live  at  all,  it  is  so  much  more  to  have  it  live  in 
people's  hearts  than  only  in  their  brains  !  I  don't  know  that 
one's  eyes  fill  with  tears  when  he  thinks  of  the  famous  in 
ventor  of  logarithms,  but  a  song  of  Burns's  or  a  hymn  of 
Charles  Wesley's  goes  straight  to  your  heart,  and  you  can't 
help  loving  both  of  them,  sinner  as  well  as  saint." 

But  it  is  not  as  a  poet  that  Holmes  will  be  endeared 
to  the  readers  of  coming  generations :  he  has  written 
some  beautiful  lines,  it  is  true,  and  a  great  quantity 
of  lively  after-dinner  verse ;  but  he  has  sung  no  song 
that  goes  straight  to  the  heart,  unless  it  be  that  half- 
smiling,  half-tearful  poem  "  The  Last  Leaf,"  one 
stanza  of  which  Lincoln  said  contains  the  most 
pathetic  lines  in  the  English  language :  — 

"  The  mossy  marbles  rest 
On  the  lips  that  he  has  prest 

In  their  bloom, 

And  the  names  he  loved  to  hear 
Have  been  carved  for  many  a  year 

On  the  tomb." 

"  The  Chambered  Nautilus,"  which  was  Holmes's 
own  favorite,  is  sometimes  regarded  as  his  best  poem, 
and  its  last  lines  ring  on  the  ear  with  an  awakening 
call :  — 

"  Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 

As  the  swift  seasons  roll ! 

Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past, 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 

Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea ! " 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  269 

"  Under  the  Violets,"  "The  Old  Man  Dreams," 
"  Bill  and  Joe,"  "  My  Aunt,"  "  The  Wonderful  One- 
Hoss  Shay,"  are  other  popular  favorites.  But  if 
Holmes  had  left  nothing  but  his  verses  as  a  memorial 
of  himself,  he  would  have  left  no  deeper  mark  upon 
his  times  than  Drake,  Halleck,  or  Willis.  He  was  not 
possessed  by  poetry,  but  he  possessed  in  no  mean 
degree  the  poet's  gift  of  musical  speech  and  felicitous 
imagery.  In  his  dedicatory  poem  "  To  My  Readers  " 
he  says :  — 

"  Our  whitest  pearls  we  never  find  ; 
Our  ripest  fruit  we  never  reach ; 
The  flowering  moments  of  the  mind 
Drop  half  their  petals  in  our  speech." 

This  was  eminently  true  of  himself.  He  was  a  born 
talker.  Witty,  genial,  shrewd,  sympathetic,  quickly 
responsive  to  touches  of  pathos  or  sentiment,  strongly 
individual  but  without  eccentricity  of  any  kind,  his 
talk  continually  revealed  himself,  and  pleased  in  pro 
portion  as  it  revealed  the  more  of  him.  When  he 
wrote  the  Breakfast-Table  series,  he  simply  talked  on 
paper  to  the  public,  making  shrewd,  genial,  running 
comments  on  men  and  things  in  general,  not  without 
a  piquant  flavor  of  kindly  satire  at  times,  and  here  and 
there  a  genuine  poetic  flight  both  in  prose  and  verse. 
Now,  whenever  a  man  of  cleverness,  tact,  observation, 
and  wit  chooses  to  take  the  public  into  his  confidence, 
and  to  pour  out  unreservedly  his  tastes,  his  feelings, 
his  ideas,  and  his  witty  sallies,  the  public  will  lend  the 
ear  of  a  delighted  listener.  "  I  shall  say  many  things," 
says  the  Poet  of  the  Breakfast-Table,  "  which  an  un 
charitable  reader  might  find  fault  with  as  personal. 
I  should  not  dare  to  call  myself  a  poet  if  I  did  not; 


270    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

for  if  there  is  anything  that  gives  one  a  title  to  that 
name,  it  is  that  the  inner  nature  is  naked  and  is  not 
ashamed." 

Holmes  has  found  few  uncharitable  readers  of  that 
sort.  No  man  since  "  Elia  "  has  put  himself  so  directly 
into  his  work,  though  Holmes  has  not  the  mellowness, 
the  naivete,  the  indescribable  quaintness  that  make 
Charles  Lamb  so  delightful.  All  that  was  rich  and 
unctuous  and  human  in  the  antiquated  literature  of 
England  had  filtered  through  Lamb's  intellect,  and  we 
get  the  essence  of  it  in  those  incomparable  solilo 
quies  in  public  which  he  calls  his  essays.  Holmes, 
on  the  contrary,  is  very  new,  brisk,  and  modern :  we 
even  catch  now  and  then  an  unpleasant  whiff  of 
varnish  and  hear  the  creak  of  his  boots;  but  on  the 
whole  he,  too,  is  a  genuine  bit  of  human  nature,  with 
the  dear,  familiar  foibles  that  the  tailor's  art  can  never 
hide.  Nor  would  he  have  hidden  them  if  he  could. 
"  We  must  have  a  weak  spot  or  two  in  a  character,  be 
fore  we  can  love  it  much.  People  that  do  not  laugh 
or  cry,  or  take  more  of  anything  than  is  good  for 
them,  or  use  anything  but  dictionary  words,  are  ad 
mirable  subjects  for  biographers.  But  we  don't 
always  care  most  for  those  flat-pattern  flowers  that 
press  best  in  the  herbarium,"  remarks  the  professor ; 
and  it  is  true.  With  all  his  intellectual  sparkle  and 
wisdom,  and  his  deep  admiration  of  genius,  he  never 
for  a  moment  swerves  from  his  allegiance  to  the  better 
qualities  of  the  heart.  "The  brain  is  the  palest  of  all 
the  internal  organs,  and  the  heart  the  reddest.  What 
ever  comes  from  the  brain  carries  the  hues  of  the 
place  it  came  from,  and  whatever  comes  from  the 
heart  carries  the  heat  and  color  of  its  birthplace." 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  271 

And  again,  "  When  a  strong  brain  is  weighed  with  a 
true  heart,  it  seems  to  me  like  balancing  a  bubble 
against  a  wedge  of  pure  gold." 

This  is  why  the  "  new  woman  "  with  her  intellectual 
aspirations  and  ambitions  that  may  endanger  her 
affections  does  not  mean  much  to  him.  He  says :  — 

"  A  woman  who  does  not  carry  a  halo  of  good  feeling  and 
desire  to  make  everybody  contented  about  her  wherever 
she  goes,  —  an  atmosphere  of  grace,  mercy,  and  peace  of  at 
least  six  feet  radius  which  wraps  every  human  being  upon 
whom  she  voluntarily  bestows  her  presence,  and  so  flatters 
him  with  the  comfortable  thought  that  she  is  rather  glad  that 
he  is  alive  than  otherwise,  —  is  n't  worth  the  trouble  of  talking 
to,  as  a  woman  ;  she  may  do  well  enough  to  hold  discussions 
with.  .  .  .  The  brain  women  never  interest  us  like  the  heart 
women  :  white  roses  please  less  than  red.  But  our  Northern 
seasons  have  a  narrow  green  streak  of  spring  as  well  as  a 
broad  white  zone  of  winter,  —  they  have  a  glowing  band  of 
summer  and  a  golden  stripe  of  autumn  in  their  many-colored 
wardrobe ;  and  women  are  born  to  us  that  wear  all  these 
hues  of  earth  and  heaven  in  their  souls." 

He  has  no  patience  with  deception  in  a  woman  :  — 

"  I  would  have  a  woman  as  true  as  death.  At  the  first  real 
lie  which  works  from  the  heart  outward,  she  should  be  ten 
derly  chloroformed  into  a  better  world,  where  she  can  have 
an  angel  for  a  governess,  and  feed  on  strange  fruits,  which 
shall  make  her  all  over  again,  even  to  her  bones  and  marrow.7' 

A  slender  story  runs  through  each  volume  of  the 
Breakfast-Table  series,  giving  it  coherence  and  a  more 
general  interest,  but  the  real  value  of  the  series  lies  in 
the  fact  that  it  gives  us  a  finished  and  artistic  por 
traiture  of  the  author  himself  as  thinker,  poet,  and 


272     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

professor.     It  is  Holmes's  best  work,  and  his  title  to 
future  remembrance. 

Holmes's  novels  hardly  repay  a  second  perusal,  and 
even  the  witty  sentences  in  them  cannot  save  them 
from  oblivion.  They  are  inartistic  in  the  sense  that 
they  depict  abnormal,  not  normal  types  as  their  cen 
tral  characters,  and  that  they  seem  not  so  much  to 
be  written  to  give  a  faithful  picture  of  life  as  to  illus 
trate  a  theory.  The  man  of  medicine,  not  the  artist, 
is  too  apparent  in  them.  The  question  of  the  influence 
of  heredity  and  of  physical  organization  interested 
Holmes  profoundly,  too  much  so  to  make  him  a  good 
novelist ;  for  the  novelist's  power  of  reproducing  life 
and  character  faithfully  is  no  more  dependent  upon  a 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  heredity  than  portrait-paint 
ing  upon  a  knowledge  of  the  ramifications  of  nerves 
and  blood-vessels  under  the  skin.  "  Elsie  Venner," 
the  best  of  Holmes's  three  novels,  discusses  the  ques 
tion  of  prenatal  influence  and  moral  responsibility. 
The  mother  of  Elsie  Venner  had  been  bitten  by  a 
rattlesnake  shortly  before  the  birth  of  the  child.  The 
foreign  element  thus  supposed  to  be  introduced  into 
the  child's  blood  shows  itself  in  certain  peculiarities  of 
temperament  that  are  alien  to  human  nature.  While 
writing  this  novel,  Holmes  was  not  satisfied  with  read 
ing  all  that  he  could  find  about  venomous  reptiles, 
but  procured  a  live  rattlesnake  and  kept  it  for  several 
weeks,  studying  all  its  ways.  Says  Holmes,  in  a  letter 
to  Mrs.  Stowe :  — 

"  To  make  the  subject  of  this  influence  interest  the 
reader ;  to  carry  the  animalizing  of  her  nature  just  as  far  as 
can  be  done  without  rendering  her  repulsive  ;  to  redeem  the 
character  in  some  measure  by  humanizing  traits  which 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  273 

struggle  through  the  lower  organic  tendencies ;  to  carry  her 
on  to  her  inevitable  fate  by  the  natural  machinery  of  circum 
stance,  grouping  many  human  interests  around  her,  which 
find  their  natural  solution  in  the  train  of  events  involving  her 
doom,  —  such  is  the  idea  of  this  story." 

In  his  preface  to  "  The  Guardian  Angel,"  a  novel 
which  continues  the  discussion  of  hereditary  influence 
and  moral  accountability,  he  says  of  the  probability 
of  the  story  of  Elsie  Venner :  — 

"  Whether  anything  like  this  ever  happened  or  was  pos 
sible  mattered  little  :  it  enabled  me  at  any  rate  to  suggest  the 
limitations  of  human  responsibility  in  a  simple  and  effective 
way." 

This  idea  is  a  dominant  note  in  all  Holmes's  prose 
work.  The  conclusions  that  he  comes  to  are  as 
follows :  — 

"  I  believe  much,  and  I  dare  not  say  how  much,  of  what 
we  call  '  sin '  has  no  moral  character  whatever  in  the  sight  of 
the  great  Judge.  I  believe  much  of  what  we  call  '  vice  '  is 
not  only  an  object  of  the  profoundest  compassion  to  good 
men  and  women,  but  that  the  tenderest  of  God's  mercies  are 
in  store  for  many  whom  the  so-called  justice  of  the  world 
condemns.  .  .  . 

"  We  are  all  tattooed  in  our  cradles  with  the  beliefs  of  our 
tribe ;  the  record  may  seem  superficial,  but  it  is  indelible. 
You  cannot  educate  a  man  wholly  out  of  the  superstitious 
fears  which  were  early  implanted  in  his  imagination ;  no 
matter  how  utterly  his  reason  may  reject  them,  he  will  still 
feel,  as  the  famous  woman  did  about  ghosts,  (Je  n'y  crois  pas, 
mais  je  les  crams.'  .  .  . 

"  Our  natural  instincts  and  tastes  have  a  basis  which  can 
no  more  be  reached  by  the  will  than  the  sense  of  light  and 
darkness,  or  that  of  heat  and  cold.  .  .  . 

18 


274    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  It  is  very  singular  that  we  recognize  all  the  bodily  defects 
that  unfit  a  man  for  military  service  and  all  the  intellectual 
ones  that  limit  his  range  of  thought,  but  always  talk  at  him 
as  if  all  his  moral  powers  were  perfect.  I  suppose  we  must 
punish  evil-doers  as  we  extirpate  vermin ;  but  I  don't  know 
that  we  have  any  more  right  to  judge  them  than  we  have  to 
judge  rats  and  mice,  which  are  just  as  good  as  cats  and 
weasels,  though  we  think  it  necessary  to  treat  them  as 
criminals.  .  .  . 

"  Treat  bad  men  exactly  as  if  they  were  insane.  They  are 
in-sane,  out  of  health  morally.  Reason  which  is  food  to 
sound  minds  is  not  tolerated,  still  less  assimilated,  unless 
administered  with  the  greatest  caution,  perhaps  not  at  all. 
Avoid  collision  with  them,  so  far  as  you  honorably  can,  — 
for  one  angry  man  is  as  good  as  another  :  restrain  them  from 
violence  promptly,  completely,  and  with  the  least  possible 
injury,  as  in  the  case  of  maniacs,  —  and  when  you  have  got 
rid  of  them,  or  got  them  tied  hand  and  foot,  so  that  they 
can  do  no  mischief,  sit  down  and  contemplate  them  chari 
tably,  remembering  that  nine  tenths  of  their  perversity  comes 
from  outside  influences,  drunken  ancestors,  abuse  in  child 
hood,  bad  company  from  which  you  have  probably  been 
preserved,  and  for  some  of  which  you,  as  a  member  of 
society,  may  be  fractionally  responsible." 

"  A  Mortal  Antipathy,"  like  Holmes's  other  novels, 
smells  of  the  medicine  case.  It  is  the  story  of  a  young 
man  who  had  an  unconquerable  antipathy  to  beauti 
ful  young  women,  owing  to  a  fright  he  had  received 
in  his  infancy  from  a  young  and  pretty  cousin.  The 
antipathy  was  finally  overcome  by  his  rescue  during 
a  state  of  convalescence  from  a  burning  house.  His 
rescuer,  a  beautiful,  athletic  young  woman,  became  his 
wife.  The  progress  of  the  story  is  interrupted  by 
accounts  of  antipathies  and  quasi-medical  informa- 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  275 

tion.     On  the  whole,  it  is  a  disagreeable  and  feeble 
book. 

Holmes's  biographies  of  Motley  and  Emerson, 
though  readable,  do  not  belong  to  his  best  work,  any 
more  than  his  novels  do.  That  best  work  is,  as  we 
have  said  before,  the  Breakfast-Table  series,  and  it 
is  as  the  Autocrat  and  the  Professor  that  Oliver  Wen 
dell  Holmes  is  to  see  his  wish  fulfilled  to  "  live  in 
people's  hearts." 


CHAPTER   XIV 

JOHN   LOTHROP   MOTLEY    (1814-1877) 

"  T  IFE  is  work  or  it  is  nothing,"  wrote  Motley  to 
-•— '  Holmes  from  that  busy  workshop,  his  study, 
where  he  was  toiling  to  recreate  the  dead  and  gone 
for  living  readers ;  and  he  certainly  based  his  decla 
ration  on  his  own  experience.  Hard  work,  earnest 
purpose,  and  unflagging  enthusiasm  have  rarely  had 
a  better  incarnation  than  John  Lothrop  Motley,  the 
leading  historian  of  America. 

Motley  was  born  in  Dorchester,  Massachusetts, 
April  15,  1814,  and  died  in  Dorchester,  England, 
the  twenty-ninth  of  May,  1877.  He  was  interred  in 
Kensal  Green  Cemetery  near  his  wife,  whose  death 
took  place  three  years  before  his  own. 

John  Motley,  the  great-grandfather  of  our  his 
torian,  emigrated  to  this  country  from  Belfast,  Ire 
land  ;  the  ancestors  of  the  Reverend  John  Lothrop, 
the  historian's  grandfather  on  the  mother's  side,  were 
from  England.  The  father  and  mother  of  the  his 
torian  were  reputed  in  their  youth  the  handsomest 
pair  in  Boston,  and  were,  besides,  a  vivacious,  intel 
lectual  pair,  —  the  father,  a  lover  of  books,  having 
dabbled  a  little  in  literature  himself.  Thus  the  boy 
came  honestly  by  his  physical  beauty  and  his  passion 
for  reading,  being  rarely  seen  in  his  early  years  with 
out  a  book  in  his  hand.  Among  his  early  school- 


John  Lothrop  Motley  277 

masters  was  Bancroft  the  historian,  then  teaching  at 
Round  Hill,  Northampton. 

Motley  was  only  thirteen  when  he  entered  Harvard. 
He  was  fond  of  languages,  and  learned  them  easily. 
He  was  a  very  ambitious  boy,  and  had  the  reputation 
in  his  youth  of  being  reserved,  haughty,  and  cynical, 
after  the  fashion  of  what  he  had  conceived  of  Byron. 
He  spent  his  leisure  writing  poems  and  prose  tales, 
and  dreamed,  as  most  imaginative  youths  do,  of  a 
fame  in  poetry  and  fiction  that  was  never  to  be  his. 
In  1832  he  went  to  Germany,  and  continued  his 
studies  at  the  universities  of  Gottingen  and  Berlin. 
Bismarck  was  a  student  at  Gottingen  at  the  same 
time,  and  he  and  Motley  soon  became  warm  friends. 
The  two  students  subsequently  removed  to  Berlin, 
and  lodged  at  the  same  house,  living  in  the  closest 
intimacy. 

Returning  to  America  in  1834,  Motley  took  up  the 
study  of  law,  but  he  did  not  continue  long  in  so 
uncongenial  a  pursuit;  he  was  made  for  literature, 
and  to  literature  he  gave  his  attention.  In  1837  he 
married  Mary  Benjamin,  sister  of  Park  Benjamin  the 
poet  and  lecturer,  and  two  years  later  published  his 
first  work,  a  novel  in  two  volumes,  entitled  "  Morton's 
Hope."  The  book  was  a  failure.  O.  W.  Holmes,  in 
his  biography  of  Motley,  characterizes  it  as  "  a  map 
of  dissected  incidents  which  has  been  flung  out  of  its 
box,  and  has  arranged  itself  without  the  least  regard 
to  chronology  or  geography."  The  young  novelist 
did  not  take  the  failure  of  his  book  to  heart,  but 
continued  to  apply  himself  assiduously  to  his  literary 
studies.  He  went  to  Russia  in  1841  as  secretary  of 
legation,  and  took  up  his  residence  for  a  short  time 


278    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

in  St.  Petersburg.  He  found  it  an  expensive  place 
to  live  in,  and  went  into  society  just  enough,  he  says, 
to  see  its  general  structure,  "  which  is  very  showy  and 
gay,  but  entirely  hollow  and  anything  but  intellectual." 
He  gave  up  his  appointment,  returned  home,  and 
began  writing  historical  and  critical  essays  for  the 
"  North  American  Review."  In  1849  he  published 
a  second  novel,  "  Merry  Mount,  a  Romance  of  the 
Massachusetts  Colony,"  which  had  not  much  better 
favor  with  the  public  than  its  predecessor,  and  with 
the  failure  of  which  he  was  content  to  abandon  fiction 
for  the  work  in  which  he  was  destined  to  be  success 
ful.  "  Did  I  not  have  two  novels  killed  under  me 
(as  Balzac  phrases  it),"  he  writes  to  Holmes  on  the 
appearance  of  "  Elsie  Venner,"  "  before  I  found  that 
my  place  was  among  the  sappers  and  miners,  and  not 
the  lancers?  And  was  it  not  natural,  having  thus 
come  to  grief  in  the  bygone  ages,  that  I  should  feel 
solicitude  when  I  saw  you  setting  off  on  the  same 
career  ?  " 

"  Among  the  sappers  and  miners,"  his  work  did 
really  appear  to  be,  from  the  laborious  study  and 
research  it  entailed.  He  had  planned  a  history  to 
be  called  "  The  Eighty  Years'  War  for  Liberty," 
and  it  was  designed  to  cover  "a  most  remark 
able  epoch  in  human  history,  from  the  abdication  of 
Charles  V.  to  the  Peace  of  Westphalia."  The  history 
was  to  be  divided  into  three  epochs:  I.  "The 
Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic;"  II.  "Independence 
achieved,  from  the  Death  of  William  the  Silent  till 
the  Twelve  Years'  Truce  (1584-1609);"  III.  "Inde 
pendence  recognized,  from  the  Twelve  Years'  Truce 
to  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  (1609-1648)." 


John  Lothrop  Motley  279 

Motley  did  not  live  to  carry  out  fully  this  design. 
After  completing  the  history  of  the  first  two  epochs 
under  the  titles  "The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic" 
and  "  The  United  Netherlands,"  he  wrote  "  The  Life 
and  Death  of  John  of  Barneveld,  Advocate  of  Hol 
land,"  which  was  the  last  work  he  lived  to  publish. 

In  1850  he  had  composed  the  first  part  of  his 
history  of  the  "  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic ;  "  but 
feeling  the  need  of  more  material  to  work  with,  he 
went  with  his  family  to  Europe  the  following  year, 
settling  successively  at  Berlin,  Dresden,  The  Hague, 
and  Brussels ;  working  ten  hours  a  day  "  as  hard  as  a 
wood-sawyer,"  he  says,  "  digging  raw  material  out  of 
the  subterranean  depths  of  black-letter  folios,  in  half 
a  dozen  different  languages."  But  a  fine  enthusiasm 
for  his  hero,  William  of  Orange,  sustained  him  in 
these  tedious  labors,  and  he  writes  to  his  father  from 
Dresden :  — 

"  I  flatter  myself  I  have  found  one  great,  virtuous,  heroic 
character.  This  man,  who  did  the  work  of  a  thousand  men 
every  year  of  his  life,  who  was  never  inspired  by  any  personal 
ambition,  but  who  performed  good  and  lofty  actions  because 
he  was  born  to  do  them,  just  as  other  men  are  born  to  do 
nasty  ones,  deserves  to  be  better  understood  than  I  believe 
him  to  have  been  by  the  world  at  large.  He  is  one  of  the 
very  few  men  who  have  a  right  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same 
page  with  Washington." 

He  adds  that  he  is  working  on  his  history  not  for 
money,  but  in  the  hope  of  making  "  some  few  people 
in  the  world  wiser  and  better." 

He  anticipated  having  to  publish  the  book  at  his 
own  expense,  and  was  not  confident  of  success.  He 


280    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

offered  the  manuscript  first  to  Murray  of  London, 
who  declined  it,  and  then  to  Chapman,  who  published 
it  in  1856  at  the  expense  of  the  author.  It  appeared 
at  the  same  time  from  Harper's  publishing-house  in 
America,  and  met  with  instant  success.  "The  United 
Netherlands"  followed  in  1860,  and  the  next  year 
Motley  received  an  appointment  from  Lincoln  as 
minister  to  Austria.  This  appointment  involved  a 
residence  in  Vienna,  where  Motley  had  the  pleasure 
of  renewing  his  friendship  with  his  old  college  friend 
Bismarck. 

After  the  accession  of  President  Johnson,  Motley 
resigned  the  Austrian  ministry,  because  he  felt 
insulted  by  a  letter  of  inquiry  addressed  to  him  by 
Secretary  Seward,  at  the  instigation  of  the  President, 
concerning  the  truth  of  certain  calumnious  reports 
made  against  him  by  a  venomous  slanderer  wholly 
unknown  to  Motley. 

The  proud-spirited  author,  every  inch  a  gentleman 
and  a  patriot,  was  not  more  fortunate  in  his  next 
appointment  as  minister  to  England,  in  1869,  under 
the  Grant  administration.  He  was  recalled  in  1871 
because  of  an  alleged  failure  to  follow  the  instruc 
tions  of  his  government  in  an  interview  with  Lord 
Clarendon  concerning  the  Alabama  claims.  Accord 
ing  to  Grant's  alleged  statement,  Motley  was  expli 
citly  charged  to  treat  the  subject  in  the  gentlest 
possible  manner,  and,  on  the  contrary,  followed  the 
lead  of  Sumner,  who  had  offended  the  British 
government  by  a  violent  speech  on  the  subject. 
But  as  Motley's  alleged  offence  had  not  excited 
more  than  a  gentle  demur  followed  by  a  satisfac 
tory  adjustment  of  the  difficulty  at  the  time  of  its 


John  Lothrop  Motley  281 

occurrence,  and  as  a  year  had  gone  by  before  a  re 
newal  of  the  charge  was  made,  Motley's  biographer, 
Holmes,  is  inclined  to  think  that  the  real  cause  of  his 
dismissal  was  Grant's  private  animosity  to  Motley 
on  account  of  the  latter's  friendship  with  Sumner, 
whose  determined  opposition  to  the  annexation  of 
San  Domingo  to  the  United  States  had  antagonized 
Grant.  However  that  may  be,  Motley  keenly  felt 
the  injustice  of  the  recall.  He  had  served  his  country 
faithfully,  and  he  had  won  the  respect  and  admira 
tion  of  the  English  nation,  not  only  through  his 
intellectual  gifts,  but  through  the  courtesy  and  tact 
with  which  he  had  discharged  his  official  duties.  He 
now  turned  once  more  to  his  chosen  work,  and  estab 
lished  himself  at  The  Hague  to  collect  material  for 
the  history  of  John  of  Barneveld,  which  was  pub 
lished  in  1874,  not  quite  three  years  before  the 
author's  death. 

Speaking  of  Motley  as  he  appeared  in  his  college 
days,  Holmes  says :  — 

"  In  after  years  one  who  knew  Lord  Byron  most  nearly, 
noted  his  resemblance  to  that  great  poet,  and  spoke  of  it  to 
one  of  my  friends ;  but  in  our  young  days  many  pretty 
youths  affected  that  resemblance  and  were  laughed  at  for 
their  pains,  so  that  if  Motley  recalled  Byron's  portrait  it  was 
only  because  he  could  not  help  it.  His  finely  shaped  and 
expressive  features ;  his  large,  luminous  eyes ;  his  dark, 
waving  hair ;  the  singularly  spirited  set  of  his  head,  which 
was  most  worthy  of  note  for  its  shapely  form  and  poise  ;  his 
well-outlined  figure,  —  all  gave  promise  of  his  manly  beauty, 
and  commended  him  to  those  even  who  could  not  fully 
appreciate  the  richer  endowments  of  which  they  were  only 
the  outward  signature." 


282    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

There  was  much  of  the  poet  in  that  fine  organiza 
tion  of  Motley's  as  well  as  in  his  appearance.  He 
was  excitable,  impulsive,  ardent  in  his  loves  and 
hates,  subject  to  the  depressions  of  the  melancholy 
temperament;  but  he  held  these  moods  well  in  check. 
He  had  failed  in  his  earliest  efforts;  he  had  been 
severely  wounded  by  the  lack  of  confidence  his  gov 
ernment  had  placed  in  him ;  he  was  diffident  about 
the  success  of  his  later  work  in  history.  He  was 
proudly  reserved ;  his  letters  edited  by  George  Wil 
liam  Curtis  fill  two  large  octavo  volumes,  and  not 
one  letter  reveals  a  familiar  glimpse  of  the  man. 
Descriptions  of  places  and  people  make  up  the  bulk 
of  them,  —  rapidly  sketched  outlines  of  notabilities 
whom  he  has  met,  and  he  met  many  of  them,  but 
these  sketches  are  limited  to  the  external  appearance. 
Whenever  he  feels  obliged  to  speak  of  himself,  he 
apologizes  for  his  egotism,  and  gets  rid  of  the  neces 
sity  of  such  speaking  in  as  few  words  as  possible. 
But  he  has  not  so  successfully  kept  himself  out  of 
his  histories ;  he  is  not  a  cool,  indifferent  narrator  of 
events.  His  pulse  quickens,  his  color  rises  as  he 
narrates  the  horrible  atrocities  of  the  Inquisition,  and 
the  cold,  perfidious  cruelty  of  Philip  II.  of  Spain ; 
and  he  loves  his  hero,  William  of  Orange,  grows 
tender  over  him,  and  spares  no  pains  of  research  to 
pay  a  tribute  to  his  greatness.  Prescott  wrote  to 
him:  — 

"  You  have  laid  it  on  Philip  rather  hard.  Indeed  you 
have  whittled  him  down  to  such  an  imperceptible  point 
that  there  is  hardly  enough  of  him  left  to  hang  a  newspaper 
paragraph  on,  much  less  five  or  six  volumes  of  solid  history, 
as  I  propose  to  do.  But  then  you  make  it  up  with  your 


John  Lothrop  Motley  283 

hero,  William  of  Orange,  and  I  comfort  myself  with  the 
reflection  that  you  are  looking  through  a  pair  of  Dutch 
spectacles,  after  all." 

But  whether  looking  through  Dutch  spectacles  or 
with  his  naked  eyes,  Motley  never  saw  in  tyranny  any 
thing  but  an  outrage  on  humanity,  and  anything  but  a 
virtue  in  brave,  resolute  resistance  to  it.  He  thought 
Carlyle  "  a  most  immoral  writer  for  his  exaggerated 
reverence  for  brute  force,  which  he  was  so  apt  to  con 
found  with  wisdom  and  genius.  A  world  governed 
a  la  Carlyle  would  be  a  pandemonium."  Much  of 
Motley's  strength  as  a  writer  lies  in  this  keen  percep 
tion  of  moral  distinctions.  No  mere  worldly  success  or 
triumph  can  make  wrong  right  to  him.  He  had,  too, 
the  power  of  vivid  description  and  lifelike  portrayal  of 
character.  His  style  is  by  no  means  always  above 
criticism,  but  it  is  always  the  dress  of  sinewy,  fiery, 
living  thought,  and  much  may  be  pardoned  the  dress 
of  a  courier  who  brings  us  valuable  information. 

Of  Motley's  three  histories,  "The  Rise  of  the 
Dutch  Republic "  is  the  most  interesting,  from  the 
fact  that  its  history  is,  as  he  himself  says,  at  the  same 
time  the  biography  of  William  the  Silent ;  and  the 
reader  follows  the  story  of  the  hero  with  unabated 
interest  from  beginning  to  end.  The  history  opens 
with  a  description  of  the  territory  and  the  early 
inhabitants  of  the  Netherlands,  followed  by  an  ac 
count  of  the  rise  and  expansion  of  municipal  power. 
The  history  proper  begins  with  the  abdication  of 
Charles  V.  and  the  accession  of  Philip  II.  to  the 
throne  of  Spain.  The  subsequent  struggle  for  re 
ligious  and  political  freedom  is  narrated  with  spirit 
and  fulness  of  detail,  and  the  history  concludes  with 


284    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

the  assassination  of  the  Prince  of  Orange,  July  10, 
1584.  The  fine  pen  portrait  of  the  Prince  in  the  con 
cluding  chapter  deserves  to  be  transcribed  entire,  as 
an  example  of  Motley's  sympathetic  treatment  of  a 
subject;  but  we  can  give  but  very  little  of  it  here:  — 

"  His  constancy  in  bearing  the  whole  weight  of  struggle  as 
unequal  as  men  have  ever  undertaken  was  the  theme  of  ad 
miration  even  to  his  enemies.  The  rock  in  the  ocean  '  tran 
quil  amid  raging  billows '  was  the  favorite  emblem  by  which 
his  friends  expressed  their  sense  of  his  firmness.  From  the 
time  when,  a  hostage  in  France,  he  first  discovered  the  plan 
of  Philip  to  plant  the  Inquisition  in  the  Netherlands,  up  to 
the  last  moment  of  his  life,  he  never  faltered  in  his  determi 
nation  to  resist  that  iniquitous  scheme.  This  resistance 
was  the  labor  of  his  life.  To  exclude  the  Inquisition,  to 
maintain  the  ancient  liberties  of  his  country,  was  the  task 
which  he  appointed  to  himself  when  a  youth  of  three-and- 
twenty.  Never  speaking  a  word  concerning  a  heavenly 
mission,  never  deluding  himself  or  others  with  the  usual 
phraseology  of  enthusiasts,  he  accomplished  the  task  through 
danger,  amid  toils,  and  with  sacrifices  such  as  few  men  have 
ever  been  able  to  make  on  their  country's  altar ;  for  the  dis 
interested  benevolence  of  the  man  was  as  prominent  as  his 
fortitude.  A  prince  of  high  rank  and  with  royal  revenues, 
he  stripped  himself  of  station,  wealth,  almost  at  times  of  the 
common  necessaries  of  life,  and  became  in  his  country's 
cause  nearly  a  beggar  as  well  as  an  outlaw.  Nor  was  he 
forced  into  his  career  by  an  accidental  impulse  from  which 
there  was  no  recovery.  Retreat  was  ever  open  to  him.  Not 
only  pardon  but  advancement  was  urged  upon  him  again  and 
again.  Officially  and  privately,  directly  and  circuitously,  his 
confiscated  estates,  together  with  indefinite  and  boundless 
favors  in  addition,  were  offered  to  him  on  every  great  occa 
sion.  ...  He  went  through  life  bearing  the  load  of  a  peo- 


John  Lothrop  Motley  285 

pie's  sorrows  upon  his  shoulders  with  a  smiling  face.  Their 
name  was  the  last  word  upon  his  lips,  save  the  simple  affirm 
ative  with  which  the  soldier,  who  had  been  battling  for  the 
right  all  his  lifetime,  commended  his  soul,  in  dying,  '  to  his 
great  Captain  Christ.'  The  people  were  grateful  and  affec 
tionate,  for  they  trusted  the  character  of  their  'Father 
William,'  and  not  all  the  clouds  which  calumny  could  collect 
ever  dimmed  to  their  eyes  the  radiance  of  that  lofty  mind 
to  which  they  were  accustomed  to  look  for  light.  As  long 
as  he  lived,  he  was  the  guiding  star  of  a  whole  brave 
nation,  and  when  he  died  the  little  children  cried  in  the 
streets." 


CHAPTER   XV 

HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU   (1817-1862) 

EVERY  literature  has  a  class  of  books  whose 
merit  is  of  a  rarity  so  exquisite  and  delicate 
that  they  never  become  general  favorites  with  the 
public.  They  require  for  their  enjoyment  a  purity 
of  taste  that  can  detect  beauty  unadorned  and  a 
familiarity  with  the  essential  truths  of  human  nature 
that  underlie  all  the  trappings  of  culture  and  civili 
zation.  These  books  have  their  warm  admirers,  who 
prefer  for  them,  as  Scherer  says  of  a  book  he  loved, 
just  "that  sort  of  half  success,  .  .  .  that  which  a  lover 
prefers  for  the  woman  he  loves,  dreading  to  see  her 
the  object  of  an  admiration  too  noisy,  too  general, 
and  therefore  profane,  but  wounded  in  his  feelings 
if  he  finds  everybody  indifferent  to  the  charms  that 
touch  him  to  the  bottom  of  his  heart."  Such 
admirers  "rather  congratulate  themselves  on  the 
fact  that  the  importunate  noise  of  fame  has  not  been 
heard  around  a  delicate  and  discreet  work.  They 
would  have  been  less  sure  of  their  impression  had 
it  been  general.  They  have  enjoyed  more  because 
they  felt  they  were  enjoying  alone.  The  author 
appeared  to  belong  more  to  them ;  the  book  remained 
for  them  more  intimate  and  lovable." 

No  author  of  America  has  been  so  worthily  the 
object   of  this   tender,    half -jealous   regard    in   the 


Henry  David  Thoreau  287 

warm  appreciation  of  a  select  few  as  Henry  D. 
Thoreau.  The  most  original,  the  most  purely 
spiritual,  and  most  purely  intellectual  of  all  Ameri 
can  authors;  the  freshest  and  in  some  essential 
respects  the  soundest  and  most  tonic  writer,  —  his 
very  merits  have  contributed  to  retard  the  growth  of 
a  fame  which  slowly  increases  year  by  year.  Dur 
ing  his  lifetime  but  two  of  his  works  were  pub 
lished,  —  "A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac 
Rivers,"  in  1849,  and  "Walden,"  in  1854.  So 
unsuccessful  with  the  public  was  the  first  work,  that 
four  years  after  its  appearance  the  author  received 
from  his  publishers  seven  hundred  and  six  unsold 
copies  out  of  a  first  edition  of  one  thousand  copies. 

"Walden"  attracted  more  attention,  but  it  con 
tributed  to  a  singular  misapprehension  of  the  author, 
whose  two  years'  experiment  came  to  be  regarded  as 
an  epitome  of  his  lifetime,  and  the  author  himself, 
as  a  hermit  or  recluse  who  passed  his  life  in  the 
depths  of  the  forest  far  from  the  homes  of  men. 
Emerson's  vigorous  and  characteristic  sketch  of  him 
accentuated  too  strongly  the  stoical  element  of  his 
nature,  and  further  contributed  to  this  misapprehen 
sion.  But  Thoreau  left  at  his  death  forty  volumes 
of  manuscripts,  from  which  successive  publications 
have  been  made,  until  we  have  now  in  all  eleven 
printed  volumes,  from  whose  tonic,  wholesome 
pages  there  emerges  the  spirit  of  a  man  of  such 
deep,  underlying  tenderness  as  puts  to  shame  all 
surface  emotionalism,  and  of  so  sweet  and  lofty  a 
serenity,  so  exquisite  a  purity  and  so  complete  a 
truthfulness,  that  earth  seems  a  fitter  dwelling-place 
for  all  the  virtues  because  he  shared  its  life. 


288     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Henry  David  Thoreau  was  born  in  Concord,  Mas 
sachusetts,  July  12,  1817.  Through  his  father,  he 
was  of  French  Huguenot  descent,  but  the  Celtic  ele 
ment  in  his  nature  is  hardly  apparent  in  anything 
except  that  happy  unconcern  for  the  morrow  which 
makes  the  most  of  to-day;  though  in  Thoreau 's  case 
there  was  no  levity  in  this  unconcern,  and  it  seems 
rather  the  fine  flowering  of  philosophy  than  the  ten 
dency  of  inherited  temperament.  The  elder  Thoreau 
was  a  pencil-maker,  and  the  limited  income  from 
his  trade  sufficed  for  the  needs  of  his  family,  but  left 
nothing  for  luxuries.  But  the  boy,  Henry,  had  a 
healthy  appetite  for  out-doors  which  made  him  inde 
pendent  of  any  artificial  luxury  for  his  enjoyment. 
He  scoured  field  and  wood  and  meadow;  he  col 
lected  specimens  for  the  naturalist  Agassiz.  But 
the  spirit  of  poetry  even  then,  as  always,  was 
stronger  in  him  than  the  spirit  of  science,  and  he 
was  fond  of  going  up  the  river  to  a  cliff  with  his 
brother  John  to  see  the  sun  rise  and  gleam  on  the 
smooth,  still  waters,  or  of  a  Sabbath  afternoon  he 
liked  to  climb  to  the  garret  at  home,  in  which  he 
used  to  monopolize,  he  says,  the  little  Gothic  win 
dow  that  overlooked  the  kitchen-garden,  in  order 
to  watch  the  clouds  and  the  flight  of  birds.  His 
seriousness  in  early  boyhood  earned  for  him  among 
his  schoolfellows  the  title  of  "Judge." 

He  entered  Harvard  University  in  1833,  taught 
school  between  college  terms,  and  was  graduated 
four  years  later.  In  1834  he  began  keeping  the 
diary  from  which  selections  were  from  time  to  time 
given  to  the  public  after  his  death.  On  his  return 
home  after  his  graduation,  he  taught  for  a  short 


Henry  David  Thoreau  289 

time  in  the  Concord  Academy,  then  mastered  the 
secret  of  pencil-making.  Having  convinced  himself 
that  he  could  make  the  best  lead-pencil  in  the  mar 
ket,  he  refused  to  make  another,  on  the  ground  that 
he  would  not  be  continually  doing  what  he  had 
mastered,  but  must  apply  himself  to  learning  what 
he  did  not  know.  He  writes  to  a  friend  about  this 
time:  — 

"  I  am  as  unfit  for  any  practical  purpose  —  I  mean  for  the 
furtherance  of  the  world's  ends  — as  gossamer  for  ship-timber, 
and  I,  who  am  going  to  be  a  pencil-maker  to-morrow,  can 
sympathize  with  God  Apollo  who  served  King  Admetus  for 
a  while  on  earth.  But  I  believe  he  found  it  for  his  advan 
tage  at  last,  as  I  am  sure  I  shall,  though  I  shall  hold  the 
nobler  part  at  least  out  of  the  service.  Do  not  attach  any 
undue  seriousness  to  this  threnody,  for  I  love  my  fate  to  the 
very  core  and  rind,  and  could  swallow  it  without  paring  it,  I 
think/7 

His  keen,  alert  intellect,  with  its  insatiable  desire 
for  knowledge,  made  such  heavy  demands  upon  his 
time  that  he  early  resolved  that  all  his  economies 
should  be  in  the  sphere  of  his  material  wants,  and 
that  he  should  reduce  these  wants  to  their  lowest 
terms.  He  was  poor,  and  dependent  upon  his  own 
exertions  for  his  livelihood.  He  coveted  a  broad 
margin  to  his  life,  an  untrammelled  leisure  for  mental 
growth.  He  was  willing  to  give  life  only  for  life,  and 
would  engage  permanently  in  no  calling  that  could 
give  him  nothing  but  money  in  return  for  his  time. 
Far  beyond  all  the  wealth  of  the  world,  he  rated  the 
wealth  of  intellect  and  character,  and  to  acquire  this 
imperishable  wealth  was  his  only  aim.  He  bought 

19 


290    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

strong,  homely  clothes,  warranted  to  stand  the  wear 
and  tear  of  hard  service,  and  his  trousers  were  made 
by  the  village  sempstress  in  an .  old-fashioned  style. 
He  learned  surveying,  was  an  adept  at  gardening  and 
fence-making,  and  varying  these  out-door  employ 
ments  with  occasional  teaching,  he  passed  his  early 
manhood  in  what  his  neighbors  thought  a  manner 
wholly  unworthy  of  his  college  training  and  his  men 
tal  gifts.  They  looked  askance,  too,  at  his  fondness 
for  rambling  in  the  woods  on  Sunday,  and  predicted 
no  good  of  a  youth  who  preferred  the  turf  of  the 
forest  to  the  pews  of  a  church. 

In  1839  he  and  his  brother  John  built  a  boat,  and 
made  a  voyage  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac  rivers. 
Thoreau  afterward  sold  the  boat  in  which  the  voyage 
was  made  to  Hawthorne,  who  changed  the  name  from 
"  Musketaquid,"  the  Indian  name  for  the  Concord 
River,  to  the  "  Pond  Lily."  In  1841  Emerson,  always 
generously  susceptible  to  intellectual  qualities,  invited 
Thoreau  to  make  his  home  with  him.  Thoreau 
accepted  the  invitation,  and  was  a  member  of  Emer 
son's  household  for  two  years,  rendering  in  his  turn 
such  services  as  required  the  aid  of  an  ingenious 
head  and  skilful  fingers.  In  January  of  the  follow 
ing  year,  Thoreau's  brother  John  died  from  lockjaw, 
the  result  of  tearing  his  hand  on  a  rusty  nail  while 
leaping  over  a  fence.  What  Thoreau  seemed  to  feel 
in  the  death  of  this  brother,  which  touched  him 
deeply,  was  the  exaltation  rather  than  the  despair  of 
grief.  It  cleared  away  trivial  events  for  him,  set  him 
face  to  face  with  a  great  reality,  concentrated  and 
purified  his  aim,  and  made  him  say  what  sounds  at 
first  hearing  strange  and  heartless,  but  what  is  pro- 


Henry  David  Thoreau  291 

foundly  true  :   "  Any  pure  grief  is  ample  recompense 
for  all." 

In  1843  Thoreau  left  Concord  for  Staten  Island, 
New  York,  to  become  for  a  time  tutor  in  the  family  of 
William  Emerson,  a  brother  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emer 
son.  Hawthorne,  who  was  living  in  Concord  at  this 
time,  and  had  early  learned  to  value  Thoreau,  makes 
note  of  his  departure  in  his  journal  in  the  following 
manner:  "  I  should  like  to  have  him  remain  here,  he 
being  one  of  the  few  persons  with  whom  to  hold  inter 
course  is  like  hearing  the  boughs  of  a  forest  tree; 
and  with  all  this  wild  freedom  there  is  high  and  classic 
cultivation  in  him,  too."  But  there  was  more  than 
high  and  classic  cultivation  and  wild  freedom  in  him. 
The  hunger  and  aspiration  of  the  ideal  haunted  him. 
He  sifted  all  that  is  coarse  and  trivial  out  of  life,  and 
would  have  but  the  finest  flour  of  it.  He  asked 
from  his  friends  no  toleration  of  what  was  weak  in 
him,  but  a  constant  challenge  to  keep  his  life  in 
harmony  with  his  highest  aspirations.  His  letters 
to  Mrs.  Emerson  breathe  a  lofty,  ideal,  chivalric 
spirit,  very  exquisite  and  very  rare.  He  writes  to 
her:- 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  influence  for  two  years.  I  was 
fortunate  to  be  subjected  to  it,  and  am  now  to  remember  it. 
It  is  the  noblest  gift  we  can  make  :  what  signify  all  others 
that  can  be  bestowed  ?  You  have  helped  to  keep  my  life 
*  on  loft,'  as  Chaucer  says  of  Griselda,  and  in  a  better  sense. 
You  always  seemed  to  look  down  at  me  as  from  some 
elevation  —  some  of  your  high  humilities  —  and  I  was  the 
better  for  having  to  look  up.  I  felt  taxed  not  to  disappoint 
your  expectations,  for  could  there  be  any  accident  so  sad  as 
to  be  respected  for  something  better  than  we  are  ?  ...  The 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

thought  of  you  will  constantly  elevate  ray  life ;  it  will  be 
something  always  above  the  horizon  to  behold,  as  when  I 
look  at  the  evening  star." 

Thoreau  returned  to  Concord  in  the  following 
year.  Besides  a  paper  in  the  "  Dial,"  a  lecture,  and 
two  or  three  essays,  he  had  as  yet  given  nothing  to 
the  public,  and  in  what  he  had  written,  no  adequate 
expression  of  himself.  Simple  and  unconventional 
as  was  his  life,  the  problem  of  gaining  a  livelihood 
still  absorbed  much  of  his  time,  and  he  longed  for 
seclusion  and  leisure  to  think  and  write.  In  1841  he 
wrote  to  a  friend :  — 

"  I  grow  savager  and  savager  every  day,  as  if  fed  on  raw 
meat,  and  my  tameness  is  only  the  repose  of  untamableness. 
I  dream  of  looking  abroad  summer  and  winter  with  free 
gaze  from  some  mountain-side  while  my  eyes  revolve  in  an 
Egyptian  shine  of  health ;  I  to  be  nature,  looking  into 
nature  with  such  easy  sympathy  as  the  blue-eyed  grass  in  the 
meadow  looks  into  the  face  of  the  sky.  From  some  such 
recess  I  would  put  forth  sublime  thoughts  daily,  as  the 
plant  puts  forth  leaves.  Now-a-nights  I  go  on  to  the  hill  to 
see  the  sun  set  as  one  would  go  home  at  evening,  —  the 
bustle  of  the  village  has  run  on  all  day  and  left  me  quite  in 
the  rear ;  but  I  see  the  sun  set  and  find  that  it  can  wait  for 
my  slow  virtue. 

But  I  forget  that  you  think  more  of  this  human  nature 
than  of  this  nature  I  praise.  Why  won't  you  believe  that 
mine  is  more  human  than  any  single  man  or  woman  can  be  ? 
that  in  it,  in  the  sunset  there,  are  all  the  qualities  that  can 
adorn  a  household,  —  and  that  sometimes  in  a  fluttering 
leaf  one  may  hear  all  your  Christianity  preached." 

This  letter  is  the  prelude  to  the  Walden  experi 
ment,  which  was  not,  as  some  of  his  critics  and  biog- 


Henry  David  Thoreau  293 

raphers  say,  a  deliberate  attempt  to  prove  that  "  man 
could  be  as  independent  of  his  kind  as  a  nest-building 
bird ;  "  but  the  act  of  a  man  with  urgent  business 
on  hand  who  knew  how  to  shut  himself  away  from 
intruders.  He  says :  — 

"  I  used  to  see  a  large  box  by  the  railroad  six  feet  long 
by  three  feet  wide  in  which  the  laborers  locked  up  their 
tools  at  night,  and  it  suggested  to  me  that  every  man  who  is 
hard  pushed  might  get  such  a  one  for  a  dollar,  and  having 
bored  a  few  auger-holes  in  it  to  admit  the  air,  at  least  get 
into  it  when  it  rained,  and  at  night  hook  down  the  lid,  and 
so  have  freedom  in  his  love,  and  in  his  soul  be  free." 

Our  Yankee  Diogenes  was  not  so  hard  pushed  for 
his  tub.  Emerson  owned  a  few  acres  of  woodland 
on  the  shores  of  Lake  Walden,  about  two  miles  from 
Concord,  and  they  were  at  Thoreau's  service.  In 
March,  1845,  Thoreau  began  building  for  himself  a 
small  shanty  on  a  beautiful  knoll  among  the  pines, 
through  which  gleamed  the  sea-green  waters  of  Lake 
Walden.  He  dug  a  cellar  seven  feet  deep  in  the  side 
of  a  sloping  hill,  cut  white  pines  for  foundation  tim 
ber,  bought  an  old  shanty  from  an  Irishman  living 
near  the  railroad,  took  it  to  pieces  and  transported 
its  boards,  roof,  and  nails  to  his  chosen  site.  His 
shanty  cost  him  $28.12^.  It  consisted  of  one  room, 
ten  feet  wide  by  fifteen  feet  long.  It  had  a  window 
at  each  side,  a  door  at  one  end,  and  a  brick  fireplace 
opposite  the  door.  His  furniture,  he  tells  us,  consisted 
of  "  a  bed,  a  table,  three  chairs,  a  looking-glass  three 
inches  in  diameter,  a  kettle,  a  skillet,  a  frying-pan,  a 
dipper,  a  wash-bowl,  two  knives  and  forks,  three 
plates,  one  cup  and  spoon,  a  jug  for  oil,  a  jug  for 


294    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

molasses,  and  a  japanned  lamp."  He  thanked  God 
that  he  could  sit  or  stand  without  the  aid  of  a  furni 
ture  warehouse,  and  said  that  if  he  had  to  drag 
his  trap  he  should  take  care  that  it  was  a  light  one 
and  did  not  nip  him  in  a  vital  part.  A  lady  once 
offered  him  a  mat,  but  considering  that  he  had  no 
room  to  spare  in  his  house,  and  no  time  to  spare 
within  or  without  to  shake  it,  he  declined  it,  pre 
ferring  to  wipe  his  feet  on  the  sod  before  his 
door. 

He  spaded  up  and  planted  about  a  third  of  an 
acre  near  the  house,  and  moved  into  his  new  home 
on  the  Fourth  of  July,  1845.  The  pine  wood  in  which 
he  lived  is  intermixed  with  oak,  hickory,  hazel,  and 
an  undergrowth  of  low  blueberry  bushes  and  ram 
bling  blackberry  vines.  In  summer  the  dark  lustrous 
leaves  of  the  wintergreen,  and  the  graceful,  trailing 
partridge-berry  gleam  among  the  brown  pine  needles 
on  the  ground.  The  golden-rod  and  aster  brighten 
the  steep  wooded  banks  encircling  the  lake,  and  the 
air  is  fragrant  with  the  balsamic  odors  of  the  pine. 
It  is  an  idyllic  spot  to  live  in,  and  the  visitor  at  first 
sight  of  it  has  a  feeling  of  pleasant  surprise  and  an 
impression  that  Thoreau's  stay  here  was  only  a  de 
lightful  and  prolonged  camping-out,  the  experience 
of  which  any  one  might  envy  him.  The  house  is  gone 
now,  and  only  a  trace  of  shallow  excavation  remains 
to  show  its  site ;  but  near  it,  in  the  direction  of  the 
lake,  stands  a  cairn,  piled  up  by  visitors  and  yearly 
growing  larger,  so  that  there  is  no  danger  of  its  site 
being  lost  with  time. 

Thoreau's  housekeeping  cost  him  little  effort.  He 
scoured  the  knives  by  thrusting  them  into  the  earth; 


Henry  David  Thoreau  295 

he  cleaned  his  floor  by  throwing  water  on  it  and 
scouring  it  with  sand  and  a  broom.  He  used  neither 
tea,  coffee,  butter,  milk,  nor  fresh  meat,  so  that  his 
food  cost  him  in  money  but  twenty-seven  cents  a 
week.  He  confesses  to  have  made  a  satisfactory 
dinner  off  a  dish  of  purslane,  gathered  in  his  corn 
field  and  boiled  and  salted.  For  bread,  he  found  a 
mixture  of  rye  and  Indian  meal  the  most  convenient 
and  agreeable,  and  made  it  up  without  yeast  on  find 
ing  it  palatable,  after  forgetting  his  rules  and  scalding 
his  yeast  one  morning.  But  once,  for  more  than  a 
month  he  had  no  bread,  owing  he  said  to  the  empti 
ness  of  his  purse,  and  got  his  satisfaction  out  of  the 
experience  by  discovering  that  even  the  "staff  of 
life "  is  not  absolutely  essential  to  life.  Counting  up 
his  expenses  and  income  at  the  close  of  a  summer's 
gardening,  he  thinks  he  has  been  more  successful 
than  any  other  Concord  farmer,  because  he  has  made 
$8.71^,  and  if  his  house  had  burned  or  his  crops 
failed,  he  would  have  been  nearly  as  well  off  as  be 
fore.  He  was  out  of  the  reach  of  the  power  of  for 
tune  to  make  or  mar  him.  By  working  six  weeks  in 
the  year,  he  found  he  could  meet  all  the  expenses  of 
living,  and  in  the  large  leisure  thus  left  him  he  him 
self  could  "  grow  like  corn  in  the  night "  and  "  put 
forth  sublime  thoughts  daily  as  the  plant  puts  forth 
leaves." 

He  got  ready  for  publication  his  "  Week  on  the 
Concord  and  Merrimac  Rivers."  He  made  a  trip  to 
the  Maine  woods,  recorded  his  daily  observations  of 
nature  in  his  faithful  diary;  and  never  had  nature  a 
more  loving,  more  patient,  or  more  faithful  observer 
than  he.  Says  Lowell:  — 


296    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  He  had  watched  nature  like  a  detective  that  is  to  go 
upon  the  stand.  As  we  read  him,  it  seems  as  if  all  out-of- 
doors  had  kept  a  diary  and  become  its  own  Montaigne. 
We  look  at  the  landscape  as  in  a  Claude  Lorraine  glass ; 
compared  with  his,  all  other  books  of  similar  aim,  even 
White's  Selborne,  seem  dry  as  a  country  clergyman's 
meteorological  journal  in  an  old  almanac." 

Concord  was  so  accessible,  and  walking  so  agree 
able,  to  Thoreau  that  hardly  a  day  passed  in  which 
he  did  not  go  to  town.  On  one  of  these  visits  to 
town  in  1846,  he  was  arrested  and  put  into  jail  for  re 
fusing  to  pay  his  poll-tax.  This  refusal  was  Thoreau's 
emphatic  way  of  protesting  that  he  owed  no  alle 
giance  to  a  government  under  which  slavery  existed, 
and  when  Emerson  went  to  his  cell  and  said,  "  Henry, 
why  are  you  here?"  he  answered  significantly,  "Why 
are  you  not  here?"  His  friends  paid  his  tax,  much 
to  his  disgust,  and  he  was  released.  This  obnoxious 
tax  continued  to  be  quietly  paid  by  his  friends,  and 
he  was  never  afterward  imprisoned  for  withhold 
ing  it. 

Among  the  most  welcome  visitors  at  Walden  of 
whom  he  makes  mention-are  Alcott,  "one  of  the  last 
of  the  philosophers ;  "  Ellery  Channing  the  poet,  with 
whom  he  made  "  a  bran-new  theory  of  life  over  a 
thin  dish  of  gruel;  "  and  Edmund  Hosmer,  the  "  long 
headed  farmer  "  of  Concord. 

As  Thoreau's  object  in  going  to  Walden  was  "  to 
transact  some  private  business  with  the  fewest  ob 
stacles,"  there  was  no  particular  reason  for  prolong 
ing  his  stay  when  the  business  was  done :  conse 
quently,  in  September,  1847,  Thoreau  left  Walden 
and  went  to  live  with  Emerson's  family  again,  while 


Henry  David  Thoreau  297 

Emerson  was  lecturing  in  England.  There  was 
between  Thoreau  and  Emerson  that  genuine  kinship 
of  spirit  whose  depth  and  fulness  makes  mere  kin 
ship  of  blood  seem  shallow  and  impertinent.  But  this 
natural  likeness  has  led  to  a  mistaken  and  foolishly 
iterated  charge  that  Thoreau  either  consciously  or 
unconsciously  imitated  Emerson  in  the  peculiar 
direction  of  his  thought  and  in  his  manner  of  ex 
pression.  Never  was  a  charge  more  unwarrantable. 
Of  the  two  men,  Thoreau  was  the  more  essentially 
original,  but  he  lacked  Emerson's  urbanity,  that 
quality  that  soothes  and  conciliates  and  makes  men 
popular.  Emerson's  love  of  nature  was  an  acquired 
taste;  with  Thoreau  it  was  born  and  bred  in  the 
bone :  he  came  and  went  "  with  a  strange  liberty  in 
nature,  a  part  of  herself."  Both  men  saw  through 
the  surfaces  and  shows  of  things,  and  valued  only  the 
core  of  sincerity  within ;  both  would  fain  live  "  not 
for  the  times,  but  for  the  eternities  :  "  but  while  Emer 
son  saw  the  wisdom  of  compromise  and  tolerance, 
and  gained  in  breadth  thereby,  Thoreau's  life  was 
one  of  complete  and  resolute  renunciation  of  all  that 
the  world  holds  dearest.  He  did  not  play  at  philos 
ophy  and  discourse  the  wisdom  of  the  sages  from 
a  down  cushion ;  he  lived  what  he  talked.  To  him 
a  thing  either  was  or  was  not,  and  he  accepted  or 
rejected  it  accordingly;  he  knew  no  half-way  meas 
ures."  He  says  :  — 

"  As  for  conforming  outwardly,  and  living  your  own  life 
inwardly,  I  do  not  think  much  of  that.  .  .  .  Just  as  success 
fully  can  you  walk  against  a  sharp  steel  edge  which  divides 
you  cleanly  right  and  left.  Do  you  wish  to  try  your  ability 
to  resist  distention  ?  It  is  a  greater  strain  than  any  soul  can 


298     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

long  endure.  When  you  get  God  to  pulling  one  way  and 
the  devil  the  other,  each  having  his  feet  well  braced,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  conscience  sawing  transversely,  almost  any 
timber  will  give  way." 

Neither  Thoreau  nor  Emerson  was  social  by  na 
ture  ;  but  while  Emerson  was  eager  to  look  at  the 
world  through  as  many  eyes  as  he  could  in  order  to 
enlarge  his  own  experiences  with  the  experiences 
of  others,  Thoreau's  own  eyes  served  him  to  such 
good  purpose  that  he  coveted  the  use  of  nobody 
else's.  He  had  absolutely  no  interest  in  man  as  a 
purely  social  creature,  and  would  not  have  exchanged 
an  hour's  silent  intercourse  with  an  Indian  for  a  day's 
converse  with  all  the  Benthams  and  Adam  Smiths 
in  the  world.  The  events  of  the  political  world  con 
cerned  him  less  than  the  flight  of  a  hawk.  It  was 
only  when  he  saw  some  principle  of  life,  some  hope 
of  humanity  in  jeopardy,  that  he  ceased  to  be  indif 
ferent,  as  when  John  Brown  was  hanged.  Then  he 
felt  himself  linked  to  our  common  humanity,  and 
thrilled  to  the  innermost  core  with  the  electric  shock 
of  sympathy.  "  Perhaps  if  I  were  to  go  to  Rome," 
he  says,  "  it  would  be  some  spring  on  the  Capitoline 
Hill  I  should  remember  the  longest."  And  yet  there 
were  springs  of  deep  feeling  in  him,  capable  of  over 
flowing  into  the  purest  tenderness  for  all  who  were 
worthy  of  sharing  his  solitude.  "  What  if  we  feel  a 
yearning  to  which  no  breast  answers?"  he  writes  in 
his  journal.  "I  walk  alone.  My  heart  is  full. 
Feelings  impede  the  current  of  my  thoughts.  I 
knock  on  the  earth  for  my  friend,  but  no  friend 
appears,  and  perhaps  none  is  dreaming  of  me.  I  am 
tired  of  frivolous  society  in  which  silence  is  forever 


Henry  David  Thoreau  299 

the  most  natural  and  the  best  manners.  I  would 
fain  walk  on  the  deep  waters,  but  my  companions  will 
only  walk  in  shallows  and  puddles ;  "  and  again  he 
writes  to  a  friend  :  — 

"  As  for  the  dispute  about  solitude  and  society,  any  com 
parison  is  impertinent.  It  is  an  idling  down  on  the  plain  at 
the  base  of  the  mountain  instead  of  climbing  steadily  to  its 
top.  .  .  .  Will  you  go  to  glory  with  me  ?  is  the  burden  of  the 
song.  ...  It  is  not  that  we  love  to  be  alone,  but  that  we 
love  to  soar,  and  when  we  do  soar,  the  company  grows 
thinner  and  thinner  till  there  is  none  at  all.  It  is  either  the 
tribune  on  the  plain,  a  sermon  on  the  mount,  or  a  very  pri 
vate  ecstasy  still  higher  up.  We  are  not  the  less  to  aim  at 
the  summits,  though  the  multitude  does  not  ascend  them. 
Use  all  the  society  that  will  abet  you." 

Society  did  not  abet  Thoreau ;  therefore  he  walked 
alone  on  the  summits,  and  left  it  loitering  on  the 
plain. 

Man  and  his  relations  to  society  as  well  as  to  na 
ture  are  the  themes  of  Emerson's  pen.  Nature  and 
her  relations  to  man  are  the  subjects  about  which 
Thoreau  writes.  These  men  faced  different  ways : 
Thoreau  looked  toward  the  primeval  forests ;  Emer 
son's  eye  was  turned  toward  the  populous  cities ;  and 
the  style  in  which  each  wrote  is  equally  characteristic. 
Both  well  knew  how  to  pack  meaning  into  few  words ; 
but  there  the  likeness  ends.  Emerson's  sentences 
are  like  jewels  that  owe  their  brilliancy  to  the  labor 
of  the  workshop.  Thoreau's  sentences  are  like  the 
forest  herbs,  sometimes  adorned  with  fragrant  deli 
cate  and  beautiful  flowers,  and  sometimes  owing 
their  value  to  their  bitterish  tonic  roots.  Perhaps 


300    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

it  is  safe  to  say  that  if  either  of  these  men  owed  an 
inspiration  to  the  other  beyond  that  of  a  friend 
ship  based  upon  similar  ideals,  it  was  Emerson, 
not  Thoreau,  who  was  the  debtor.  Unconsciously 
Thoreau  sat  to  Emerson  for  a  model  of  the  excel 
lences  so  frequently  lauded  in  his  essays,  —  the 
beautiful  indifference  to  material  things;  that  self- 
centred,  quiet  strength  that  does  not  find  recognition 
necessary  to  its  preservation;  that  sincerity  which 
belongs  to  simple  and  noble  natures;  the  single- 
eyed  devotion  to  the  intellectual  life,  —  and  in  our 
admiration  of  the  artist  it  is  an  absurdity  to  accuse 
the  model  of  a  lack  of  originality,  because  he 
resembles  the  portrait. 

In  1849  Thoreau  published  "  A  Week  on  the  Con 
cord  and  Merrimac  Rivers,"  and  made  a  trip  to  Cape 
Cod.  The  "  Week "  did  not  sell,  and  involved  him 
in  debt  for  its  printing.  Thoreau  was  neither  dis 
heartened  nor  disappointed  by  its  failure  to  interest 
the  public.  The  fact  that  the  book  existed,  that  it 
represented  sincere  life  and  earnest  thinking,  was  suc 
cess  enough  for  him.  But  his  genius  was  not  entirely 
unrecognized.  Horace  Greeley  discerned  his  uncom 
mon  wit  and  sense,  and  tried  to  bring  him  before 
the  public,  negotiating  with  publishers  and  magazine 
editors  for  him,  but  often  with  little  success.  "You 
may  write  with  an  angel's  pen,"  wrote  Greeley  to  him, 
"  yet  your  writings  have  no  mercantile  money  value 
till  you  are  known  and  talked  of  as  an  author.  Mr. 
Emerson  would  have  been  twice  as  much  known 
and  read  if  he  had  written  for  the  magazines  a  little, 
just  to  let  common  people  know  of  his  existence." 
But  Thoreau  was  in  no  haste  to  let  common  people 


Henry  David  Thoreau  301 

know  of  his  existence.  He  would  not  write  to  order 
simply  to  see  his  name  in  a  magazine.  He  believed 
that  the  writer  who  would  permanently  interest 
readers  must  report  so  much  of  his  own  life.  His 
thoughts  must  be  as  much  a  spontaneous  growth  and 
proper  to  him  as  the  acorn  is  to  the  oak,  and  he  would 
give  to  the  public  no  forced  growths,  no  tumid  hot 
house  fruits,  but  only  such  as  were  hardy  products  of 
the  soil  under  the  bare  sun,  the  wind,  and  the  rain. 
"  How  much  sincere  life  before  we  can  even  utter 
one  sincere  word !  "  he  exclaims. 

In  1853  he  took  an  active  part  in  the  antislavery 
agitation,  and  from  that  time  until  his  death  he  never 
lost  an  opportunity,  even  if  he  did  not  deliberately  seek 
it,  to  denounce  the  evil  he  hated.  His  magnificent 
plea  for  John  Brown  sets  the  ears  tingling  to  this  day, 
with  the  fierce  scorn  of  its  passionate  invective.  Yet 
this  activity  in  public  matters  was  wholly  out  of 
harmony  with  his  tastes.  In  1861,  when  the  rumble 
of  the  war  was  heard,  he  said :  "  I  do  not  so  much 
regret  the  present  condition  of  things  in  this  country 
(provided  I  regret  it  at  all)  as  I  do  that  I  ever  heard 
of  it.  ...  Blessed  are  they  who  never  read  a  news 
paper,  for  they  shall  see  Nature  and,  through  her, 
God."  A  man  of  Thoreau's  rectitude  could  shirk 
no  duty,  no  matter  how  sorely  it  burdened  him :  — 

"  The  fact  is,  you  have  got  to  take  the  world  on  your 
shoulders  like  Atlas,  and  put  along  with  it.  You  will  do  this 
for  an  idea's  sake,  and  your  success  will  be  in  proportion  to 
your  devotion  to  ideas.  It  may  make  your  back  ache  occa 
sionally,  but  you  will  have  the  satisfaction  of  hanging  it  or 
twirling  it  to  suit  yourself.  Cowards  suffer,  heroes  enjoy. 
After  a  long  day's  walk  with  it,  pitch  it  into  a  hollow  place, 


302    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

sit  down  and  eat  your  luncheon.  Unexpectedly,  by  some 
immortal  thoughts  you  will  be  compensated.  The  bank 
whereon  you  sit  will  be  a  fragrant  and  flowery  one,  and  your 
world  in  the  hollow,  a  sleek  and  light  gazelle." 

Thoreau  slipped  his  world  into  the  hollow,  and 
sat  on  the  bank  as  often  as  he  could  honorably  do  it. 
In  the  summer  of  1850  he  made  a  second  trip  to 
Cape  Cod,  and  in  September  of  the  same  year  he 
spent  a  week  in  Canada  with  his  poet-friend,  Ellery 
Channing.  In  1853  he  revisited  the  Maine  woods, 
and  four  years  later  made  his  last  journey  there. 
He  visited  the  White  Mountains,  and  while  at  home 
haunted  his  own  native  woods  and  fields  as  if  he  were 
the  incarnate  spirit  of  nature.  In  November,  1860, 
he  contracted  a  severe  cold  that  developed  later  into 
consumption.  He  went  to  Minnesota  for  his  health 
the  following  year,  but  with  no  avail.  Returning  to 
Concord,  and  conscious  that  the  end  was  not  far  off, 
he  set  about  the  revision  of  his  manuscripts  with  the 
aid  of  his  sister  Sophia.  When  at  last  he  could  no 
longer  leave  his  bed,  he  continued  to  write  while  his 
trembling  fingers  could  hold  a  pencil.  He  died  on 
the  sixth  of  May,  1862,  and  was  buried  in  Sleepy 
Hollow  Cemetery. 

Thoreau's  valuable  collection  of  plants,  Indian 
relics,  and  the  like  were  left  to  the  Boston  Society  of 
Natural  History.  At  the  death  of  his  sister  Sophia, 
in  1876,  his  journals  and  early  essays  were  given 
to  his  friend  and  literary  executor,  Mr.  Harrison 
Blake,  of  Worcester,  Massachusetts.  The  published 
volumes  prepared  from  these  manuscripts  are  known 
as  "Excursions  in  Field  and  Forest,"  "The  Maine 
Woods,"  "Cape  Cod,"  "A  Yankee  in  Canada," 


Henry  David  Thoreau  303 

"  Early  Spring  in  Massachusetts,"  "  Summer," 
"  Autumn,"  "  Winter."  Thoreau's  familiar  letters 
have  also  been  published,  and  make  an  interesting 
and  valuable  volume. 

In  appearance  Thoreau  was  short  of  stature,  but 
long-limbed,  with  narrow  sloping  shoulders.  His 
shrewd,  homely  face  was  ruddy  from  exposure  to 
the  wind  and  sun.  He  had  a  huge,  aquiline  nose, 
eyes  that  were  blue  in  certain  lights,  gray  in  others, 
and  his  soft,  abundant  hair  was  dark  brown  in  color. 
In  later  years  he  wore  a  beard,  sometimes  as  a  sort 
of  fringe  under  his  chin  to  protect  his  throat,  and 
then  as  a  covering  to  all  the  lower  part  of  his  face. 
"  He  believed  and  lived  in  his  senses  loftily,"  says 
Ellery  Channing.  Eye  and  ear  were  to  him  the 
avenues  of  perfect  delight.  The  sight  of  budding 
woods,  he  tells  us,  intoxicated  him.  All  the  sounds 
of  nature  came  to  his  ear  as  sweetest  music.  He 
loved  the  low  hum  of  the  telegraph  wires,  —  or  "  tele 
graph  harp,"  as  he  called  them.  His  verses  inter 
spersed  through  his  prose  writings  show  that  he 
had  not  an  ear  for  metrical  harmony,  but  he  loved 
music  and  was  a  rather  skilful  performer  on  the 
flute. 

Thoreau's  love  of  nature  was  not  the  weak,  sickly, 
clinging  love  of  those  sentimentalists  who  seek  in  her 
solitudes  a  salve  for  their  wounded  vanity;  neither 
was  it  a  mere  sensuous  delight  in  sweet  odors,  bright 
colors,  and  harmonious  sounds.  It  was  the  healthy, 
virile,  enduring  love  of  one  who  discerns  excellences 
and  virtues  which  he  would  make  his  own.  His  love 
was  one  with  his  aspiration.  Nature  was  as  beautiful 
to  him  and  he  haunted  her  as  ceaselessly  in  the  bleak 


304    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

desolation  of  winter  as  in  all  the  color,  beauty,  and 
manifold  life  of  summer.     He  says :  — 

"  I  would  be  as  clean  as  ye,  O  Woods.  I  shall  not  rest 
until  I  am  as  innocent  as  you.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing  so  sana 
tive,  so  poetic  as  a  walk  in  the  woods  and  fields,  even  now 
when  I  meet  none  abroad  for  pleasure.  Nothing  so  inspires 
me,  and  excites  such  serene  and  profitable  thought.  The 
objects  are  elevating.  In  the  street  and  in  society,  I  am 
almost  invariably  cheap  and  dissipated ;  my  life  is  unspeak 
ably  mean.  No  amount  of  gold  or  respectability  could  in 
the  least  redeem  it,  dining  with  the  Governor  or  a  Member 
of  Congress.  But  alone  in  distant  woods  or  fields,  in  un 
pretending  sprout  lands  or  pastures  tracked  by  rabbits,  even 
in  a  bleak  and,  to  most,  cheerless  day  like  this,  when  a  vil 
lager  would  be  thinking  of  his  inn,  I  come  to  myself.  I  once 
more  feel  myself  grandly  related.  This  cold  and  solitude  are 
friends  of  mine.  I  suppose  that  this  value  in  my  case  is 
equivalent  to  what  others  get  by  church-going  and  prayer.  I 
come  to  my  solitary  woodland  walks  as  the  homesick  go 
home.  I  thus  dispose  of  the  superfluous,  and  see  things  as 
they  are,  grand  and  beautiful.  ...  I  wish  to  get  the  Concord, 
the  Massachusetts,  out  of  my  head,  and  be  sane  a  part  of 
every  day.  ...  I  get  away  a  mile  or  two  from  the  town  into 
the  stillness  and  solitude  of  nature,  with  rocks,  trees,  weeds, 
snow  about  me.  ...  This  stillness,  solitude,  wildness  of  nature 
is  a  kind  of  thoroughwort  or  boneset  to  my  intellect.  It  is 
as  if  I  always  met  in  those  places  some  grand,  serene,  im 
mortal,  infinitely  encouraging,  though  invisible  companion,  and 
walked  with  him." 

This  intense  and  peculiar  love,  this  particular  value 
of  nature  to  himself,  leads  Thoreau  into  a  minute 
record  of  the  most  trivial  things  that  come  under  his 
observation.  Finding  men  so  engrossed  with  what 


Henry  David  Thoreau  305 

was  pitiful  and  mean  to  him,  —  mere  money-getting, 
—  he  consoled  himself  "  with  the  bravery  of  minks 
and  muskrats."  He  would  not  "  go  round  the  corner 
to  see  the  world  blow  up,"  but  he  would  make  a  day's 
journey  on  foot  to  find  what  kind  of  a  trail  the  musk- 
rat  leaves  or  to  measure  the  length  of  a  rabbit's  tracks. 
But  it  is  a  fine  moralist  that  is  making  these  measure 
ments  and  recording  these  observations,  and  if  we 
often  find  them  tiresome  and  sometimes  even  a  little 
exasperating,  we  are  rewarded  with  some  fine,  tonic 
thought,  with  the  air  of  the  hills  or  the  breath  of  pine 
woods  about  it,  and  are  refreshed  for  the  day. 

"  Cape  Cod"  is  the  least  interesting  of  Thoreau's 
works.  It  opens  with  an  account  of  a  shipwreck  and 
the  recovery  of  some  of  the  drowned  bodies,  at  which 
sight  we  feel  that  Thoreau  is  almost  as  indifferent  a 
spectator  as  the  old  men  who  are  carting  away  the 
sea-weed,  concerned  only  in  their  harvest,  which  the 
waves  wash  ashore,  and  not  in  the  useless  dead 
bodies  they  cast  up.  The  spiders,  the  shifting  sand, 
the  light-colored  toads  that  have  the  hue  of  the  sand 
they  live  in,  the  wreck,  sketches  of  the  fishermen  on 
the  Cape,  —  at  intervals  a  dry,  circumstantial  descrip 
tion,  a  reflection  on  life,  or  a  quotation  from  Greek, 
Latin,  or  some  natural  historian ;  —  that  is  "  Cape 
Cod."  The  "Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac" 
has  much  less  description  in  it,  but  abounds  with  fine 
passages  of  reflection,  notably  those  on  Sunday,  friend 
ship,  and  reading.  "  Walden  "  is  the  most  popular, 
and,  as  a  whole,  the  best  of  Thoreau's  works.  He  has 
given  us  in  it  what  he  himself  required  of  every 
author,  "  a  simple  and  sincere  account  of  his  own 
life."  Perhaps  there  is  not  in  all  literature  a  manlier, 

20 


306     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

more  sagacious,  and  more  truthful  bit  of  writing  on 
life  in  its  noblest  and  most  serious  aspects  than  the 
conclusion  of  "  Walden."  To  every  man  that  frees 
us  even  for  an  hour  from  the  slavery  of  material 
things  and  engrossing  vulgar  cares,  we  owe  sincerest 
gratitude.  No  man  ever  freed  himself  more  com 
pletely  than  Thoreau,  and  the  inspiration  of  his  life  in 
the  simple  manly  record  of  it  left  to  us,  is  the  noblest 
gift  America  has  as  yet  received  from  her  men  of 
letters. 

Not  that  Thoreau  is  not  an  extremist,  and  never 
falls  into  impracticable  views.  Men  are  more  neces 
sary  to  one  another  than  Thoreau  thought  they  were, 
and  the  progress  of  society  is  as  much  dependent  on 
man's  weakness  as  on  his  strength.  In  his  disdain  of 
inventions  and  increased  facilities  for  intercourse, 
Thoreau  forgets  that  we  owe  to  them  that  breadth  of 
mind  and  understanding  of  other  nations  and  indi 
viduals,  which  come  from  a  free  exchange  of  thought 
and  experience,  and  result  in  the  decline  of  supersti 
tion  and  the  growth  of  culture.  It  is  the  power  of 
communication  that  has  enriched  and  elevated  the 
race.  Each  generation  inherits  the  collective  wisdom 
of  its  ancestors,  and  adding  to  the  store,  passes  it  on 
to  posterity.  If  wisdom  could  not  accumulate  by 
such  legacies,  man's  condition  would  be  little  better 
than  that  of  wild  beasts.  But  in  his  impatience  at 
the  restraints  of  social  life,  which  would  have  tram 
melled  his  own  intellectual  development,  Thoreau 
ignores  his  own  immense  debt  to  civilization.  He 
himself  was  of  the  purely  intellectual  type  of  man. 
He  lived  in  thoughts,  not  actions.  He  was  perfectly 
true  to  his  individuality,  obedient  ever  to  the  inner 


Henry  David  Thoreau  307 

voice,  and  not  to  that  which  came  to  him  from  the 
outer  world.  But  he  forgets  that  all  men  are  not 
so  richly  endowed  as  he,  that  not  one  in  a  million  can 
go  to  the  woods  as  if  he  were  going  home,  or  ripen  in 
solitude  as  he  did.  Yet  he  knew  that  a  man  must 
carry  his  own  wealth  within  himself  in  order  to  be 
rich  in  poverty  and  isolation,  for  he  once  said  to 
Ellery  Channing  concerning  the  Walden  experiment : 

"  I  have  gained  considerable  time  for  study  and  writing, 
and  proved  to  my  satisfaction  that  life  may  be  maintained  at 
less  cost  and  less  labor  than  by  the  old  social  plan.  Yet  I 
would  not  insist  upon  any  one's  trying  it  who  has  not  a  pretty 
good  supply  of  internal  sunshine ;  otherwise  he  would  have, 
I  judge,  to  spend  too  much  of  his  time  fighting  with  his  dark 
humors.  To  live  alone  comfortably  we  must  have  that  self- 
comfort  which  rays  out  of  nature,  —  a  portion  of  it  at  least." 

Thus,  while  we  must  admit  the  limitations  and  the 
extravagance  of  some  of  Thoreau's  opinions,  his  life  is 
none  the  less  a  fine  example  of  the  surpassing  beauty 
and  richness  of  the  intellectual  life,  in  comparison 
with  the  meanness  and  ugly  vulgarity  of  those  lives 
whose  real  poverty  is  in  some  measure  concealed  by 
the  clutter  of  material  luxury,  and  whose  only  aim  is 
to  conceal  it  still  more  effectually  by  further  accumu 
lations.  The  spread  of  modern  luxury,  and  the  dis 
content  and  feverish  restlessness  that  follow  it,  the 
stifling  of  what  is  pure  and  disinterested,  noble  and 
beautiful  in  character  in  a  greedy  absorption  in  mere 
money-getting,  are  the  dangers  of  this  industrial  age. 
These  dangers,  confined  not  alone  to  America,  but 
spreading  to  every  part  of  the  civilized  world,  have 
been  admirably  pointed  out  to  the  French  by  one  of 


308     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

their  faithful  critics,  Emile  Montegut.  In  reading  his 
arraignment  of  the  evils  attendant  upon  the  love  of 
show  and  the  pursuit  of  gain  among  his  contempo 
raries,  we  are  in  some  degree  warned  to  stop  the 
spread  of  these  same  evils  among  ourselves.  He 
says :  — 

"  The  generations  which  preceded  us  still  preserved  some 
of  those  qualities  which  make  us  pardon  many  errors  and 
vices;  but  the  generations  which  are  growing  up  every  day, 
even  those  who  have  scarcely  entered  upon  life,  promise  to 
atone  amply  for  the  softness  and  timidity  of  their  fathers,  who 
had  not  the  courage  to  be  boldly  stripped  of  every  vestige  of 
moral  sentiment,  and  every  solicitude  for  interests  that  are 
not  material.  These  children  make  one  shudder.  Look  for 
nothing  youthful  in  them,  none  of  that  charming  thoughtless 
ness,  none  of  those  elevated  illusions  which  characterize 
youth.  The  age  of  chivalry  long  past  was  resuscitated  each 
year,  in  some  sort,  with  the  birth  of  new  generations.  But 
to-day  prosaic  realities  have  replaced  for  young  men  all  the 
illusions  with  which  they  formerly  nourished  themselves. 
Ardent,  rapacious,  pitiless  as  usurers  hardened  by  their  trade, 
as  devoid  of  tenderness  as  old  soldiers  who  have  seen  too 
much  pain,  too  many  massacres  to  be  easily  stirred,  they 
bring  to  their  pursuit  of  wealth  the  same  sharp  eagerness 
that  was  formerly  brought  to  the  pursuit  of  pleasure.  They 
have  no  passions,  no  love ;  their  heart  is  empty,  their  very 
blood  is  cold.  ...  It  seems  as  if  their  fathers  had  bequeathed 
with  their  blood  all  the  experiences,  all  the  disillusionments, 
all  the  accumulated  skepticisms  of  five  or  six  generations. 
They  have  no  other  god  but  wealth,  and  recognize  no  other 
power.  Supple,  adroit,  cunning,  they  employ  in  making  a 
fortune,  in  making  their  way,  an  activity,  an  energy,  an  assi 
duity,  such  as  no  monk  ever  practised  in  repelling  the  snares 
of  the  devil  or  in  uprooting  from  their  heart  the  instincts  of 


Henry  David  Thoreau  309 

the  old  man.  Nothing  troubles  them,  nothing  distracts 
them  from  their  aim,  and  what  it  does  not  include  they 
abandon  with  indifference.  .  .  .  They  know  how  to  abstain, 
and  they  do  not  love  abstinence.  They  are  active,  and  they 
do  not  love  work ;  dissolute,  and  they  have  no  sense  of 
pleasure." 

From  this  sad  and  degraded  picture  it  is  invigor 
ating  and  encouraging  to  turn  to  this  brave,  clean, 
noble,  and  beautiful  life  of  Thoreau's.  Not  that  he 
set  himself  up  for  an  example,  or  belonged  in  any 
sense  to  the  class  of  noisy  reformers  who  have  no 
conception  that  reform,  like  charity,  begins  at  home. 
Of  their  reforms  and  all  professional  philanthropy, 
he  had  a  healthy  horror.  To  set  about  doing  good 
without  making  it  your  chief  business  to  be  good  and 
thus  indirectly  to  illuminate  the  lives  of  others,  while 
attending,  like  the  sun,  strictly  to  your  own  business, 
he  thought  a  poor,  cheap  way  of  seeming  to  live  and 
getting  credit  for  really  living.  "  What  a  foul  subject 
is  this  of  doing  good,  instead  of  minding  one's  life, 
which  should  be  his  business !  "  he  once  wrote  to  Mr. 
Blake,  "  doing  good  as  a  carcass  which  is  only  fit  for 
manure  instead  of  as  a  living  man ;  —  instead  of  tak 
ing  care  to  flourish,  and  smell  and  taste  sweet,  and 
refresh  all  mankind  to  the  extent  of  your  capacity 
and  quality." 

Thoreau  did  good  to  mankind  in  this  way.  His 
life  tastes  and  smells  sweet.  It  is  the  poem  which  he 
would  have  written,  but  could  not  "  both  live  and  utter 
it."  And  the  melody  of  its  unwritten  verse,  the 
purity  and  nobility  of  its  unwritten  lesson,  will  abide 
with  the  world  a  lasting  possession. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL    (1819-1891) 

TT  is  not  often  that  the  critical  faculty  is  associated 
•*•  with  the  gift  of  poetry.  "  Poets  and  men  of 
strong  feeling  in  general,"  says  Ruskin,  "  are  apt  to 
be  among  the  very  worst  judges  of  painting.  The 
slightest  hint  is  enough  for  them.  Tell  them  that  a 
white  stroke  means  a  ship,  and  a  black  stain  a 
thunder-storm,  and  they  will  be  perfectly  satisfied 
with  both,  and  immediately  proceed  to  remember  all 
that  they  ever  felt  about  ships  and  thunder-storms, 
attributing  the  whole  current  and  fulness  of  their 
own  feelings  to  the  painter's  work." 

Those  who  have  seen  Turner's  "  Slave  Ship  "  want 
ing  the  Ruskin  eyes,  and  recall  the  magnificent 
description  of  it  in  "Modern  Painters,"  copies  of 
which  description  in  the  Boston  Art  Museum,  where 
the  picture  hangs,  are  put  into  the  hands  of  the 
spectator  to  assist  him  to  see,  will  have  no  difficulty 
in  assenting  to  the  above  declaration.  Ruskin  is 
eminently  a  man  of  feeling,  and  he  sees  with  his 
emotions  as  well  as  his  eyes.  What  he  says  of  judg 
ments  of  painting  by  poets  and  men  of  feeling  is 
equally  true  of  all  the  imaginative  arts.  Byron 
thought  Pope  the  prince  of  poets.  Burns  rated  him 
self  below  Thomson  and  Shenstone.  Scott's  pub 
lishers  declared  that  they  liked  well  enough  his  own 


James  Russell  Lowell  311 

"  bairns,"  but  wished  to  be  preserved  from  those  of 
his  adoption.  Hawthorne  wished  for  the  talent  of 
Anthony  Trollope.  Emerson  shot  wide  of  the  mark 
in  many  of  his  critical  estimates.  Rossetti  and  a  few 
other  imaginative  men  in  England  and  America  call 
Whitman  the  greatest  poet  of  the  century.  The  list 
might  be  extended  indefinitely,  but  it  would  carry  us 
no  farther  than  Ruskin's  admirable  explanation  why 
poets  and  men  of  feeling  are  apt  to  be  the  very  worst 
judges  of  art. 

James  Russell  Lowell,  poet  and  critic,  is  a  notable 
exception  to  this  fact.  He  had  not  only  the  quick 
responsiveness,  the  surcharge  of  feeling  that  go  with 
the  poetical  temperament,  but  he  had  the  self-poise 
and  coolness  along  with  the  power  of  sympathetic 
self-surrender,  the  acuteness  of  observation,  and  the 
breadth  of  comprehension,  the  wide  culture  and  the 
use  of  it,  that  make  the  strength  of  the  critical  faculty. 
"I  am  thankful,"  he  once  said,  "for  the  immense 
ballast  of  common  sense  I  carry.  It  sinks  me  too 
deep  in  the  water  sometimes  for  my  keel  to  plough 
air  as  a  poet's  should,  but  it  keeps  my  top-hamper 
steady  when  the  wind  blows  as  it  has  lately." 

We  should  be  equally  thankful  for  that  "  immense 
ballast  of  common  sense,"  for  we  owe  to  it  some  of 
the  best  criticism  of  the  century,  —  fine,  true,  richly 
suggestive,  and  wholly  delightful.  And  all  this  with 
out  surrendering  the  poet's  higher  privilege  to  give 
us  winged  thoughts  that  carry  us  into  the  bright 
heaven  of  invention.  "  The  Biglow  Papers,"  "  The 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  "  The  Harvard  Commemora 
tion  Ode,"  contain  some  of  the  finest  lines  that  out 
poets  have  written. 


312    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

James  Russell  Lowell  was  the  descendant  of  a 
family  that  came  originally  from  Bristol,  England. 
The  city  of  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  was  named  after 
one  of  his  ancestors,  and  another  was  the  founder  of 
the  Lowell  Institute,  Boston.  His  father  was  an 
earnest  clergyman  of  the  Unitarian  faith ;  his  mother 
a  sweet  woman  of  Scotch  descent,  with  a  vein  of 
poetry  in  her  nature  that  showed  itself  in  a  love  of 
old  ballads  and  Scotch  romances.  James  R.  Lowell 
was  born  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  the  twenty- 
second  of  February,  1819.  He  was  graduated  from 
Harvard  in  his  twentieth  year.  An  omnivorous  reader, 
a  hater  of  mathematics  and  regularly  prescribed  tasks, 
he  did  not  acquit  himself  very  creditably  as  a  student, 
and  was  suspended  for  a  few  months  in  his  Senior 
year,  because  he  was  wholly  neglectful  of  such  studies 
as  did  not  interest  him,  and  was  sent  for  a  short  time 
to  Concord  to  study  under  a  clergyman.  But  the  boy 
was  not  in  reality  idle ;  he  was  simply  educating  him 
self  after  his  own  fashion,  which  happened  not  to  be 
that  of  his  college  professors. 

After  graduating,  Lowell  studied  law,  but  found  it 
little  to  his  taste.  He  was  almost  persuaded  to  try 
mercantile  life,  when,  chancing  to  be  in  Boston  to 
look  for  a  situation,  he  stepped  into  the  United  States 
Court  and  heard  Webster.  The  eloquent  orator  so 
charmed  the  youth  that  he  returned  to  the  study  of 
law  and  took  his  degree  in  1840.  He  opened  an  office, 
and  while  waiting  for  clients  turned  his  attention  to 
poetry.  The  clients  never  came ;  but  a  book  of  poems 
entitled  "  A  Year's  Life  "  found  its  way  to  the  public 
in  his  twenty-second  year,  and  the  law  was  abandoned. 

In  1843  he  started  the  publication  of  a  magazine 


James  Russell  Lowell  313 

called  "  The  Pioneer."  Only  three  numbers  of  this 
magazine  appeared,  and  it  was  discontinued  on  the 
failure  of  the  publisher.  Lowell's  eyes  troubled  him 
about  this  time,  and  he  spent  the  better  part  of  the 
winter  in  New  York  for  their  treatment.  A  second 
volume  of  verse,  under  the  title  of  "  A  Legend  of 
Brittany,"  was  published  in  1844.  This  year  was  also 
made  memorable  by  his  marriage  to  Maria  White,  a 
beautiful,  gifted  young  girl  who  also  wrote  verses. 
The  happy  young  couple  settled  at  Cambridge,  in 
Elmwood,  the  house  in  which  the  poet  was  born; 
and  from  there,  for  a  number  of  years,  Lowell  con 
tributed  regularly  to  antislavery  journals. 

The  most  celebrated  of  these  contributions  was  the 
masterly  satire  in  verse,  "  The  Biglow  Papers."  The 
first  series  of  these  papers  was  written  as  a  protest 
against  the  Mexican  War,  which  Lowell,  in  common 
with  the  prevailing  New  England  sentiment,  regarded 
as  a  crime,  inasmuch  as  it  aimed  at  the  unjust  acquisi 
tion  of  territory  for  the  sake  of  increasing  the  number 
of  slave  States.  Lowell's  patriotism  was  not  of  the 
vulgar  sort  that  shouts,  "  Our  country,  right  or  wrong." 
Says  his  mouthpiece,  Homer  Wilbur,  in  the  "  Biglow 
Papers :  "  — 

"  Our  country  is  bounded  on  the  North  and  the  South,  on 
the  East  and  the  West,  by  justice,  and  when  she  oversteps 
that  invisible  boundary  line  by  so  much  as  a  hair's  breadth, 
she  ceases  to  be  our  mother,  and  chooses  rather  to  be  looked 
upon  quasi  noverca.  That  is  a  hard  choice  when  our  earthly 
love  of  country  calls  upon  us  to  tread  one  path  and  our 
duty  points  us  to  another.  We  must  make  as  noble  and 
becoming  an  election  as  did  Penelope  between  Icarius  and 
Ulysses.  Veiling  our  faces,  we  must  take  silently  the  hand  of 
Duty  to  follow  her." 


314    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

The  first  series  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers  "  was  pub 
lished  in  book  form  in  1848,  the  year  that  also  saw 
the  publication  of  "  A  Fable  for  Critics  "  and  "  The 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal." 

A  volume  of  prose  entitled  "  Conversations  on  the 
Old  Poets "  had  appeared  three  years  before  these 
poetical  publications,  and  though  the  book  is  weak 
ened  by  a  vast  amount  of  padding  and  a  superabun 
dance  of  imagery  oftener  far-fetched  than  true  and 
effective,  it  does  reveal  germs  of  the  Lowell  who  was 
to  make  his  mark  in  criticism.  There  is  here,  as  in 
all  his  prose,  an  ardent  love  of  excellence  as  it  shows 
itself  in  strength,  health,  and  beauty,  a  scorn  of  mere 
sentimentality  or  surface  feeling,  a  manly  indepen 
dence,  a  generous  enthusiasm  more  willing  to  see 
excellences  than  faults,  and  that  dread  of  emasculated 
speech  that  so  often  made  him  drop  from  the  lan 
guage  of  books  into  that  of  the  streets.  "  The  muse," 
he  says,  "  can  breathe  as  august  melodies  through  an 
oaten  straw  as  she  can  win  from  Apollo's  lute." 
True,  but  Lowell  forgets  that  she  cannot  as  success 
fully  play  a  duet  with  them,  which  is  what  he  often 
attempts  to  do. 

The  following  is  a  pretty  and  effective  bit  of  writing 
from  this  early  book :  — 

u  To  open  a  volume  of  Burns  after  diluting  the  mind  with 
the  stale  insipidities  of  the  mob  of  rhymers  who  preceded 
him,  reminds  me  of  a  rural  adventure  I  had  last  summer. 
Skirting  in  one  of-  my  long  walks  a  rocky  upland  which 
hemmed  in  the  low  salt  marsh  I  had  been  plashing  over,  I 
came  at  a  sudden  turning  upon  a  clump  of  red  lilies  that 
burned  fiercely  in  a  kind  of  natural  fireplace  shaped  out  for 
them  in  an  inward  bend  of  the  rock.  How  they  seemed  to 


James  Russell  Lowell  315 

usurp  to  themselves  all  the  blazing  July  sunshine  to  comfort 
their  tropical  hearts  withal !  How  cheap  and  colorless  looked 
the  little  bunch  of  blossomed  weeds  I  had  been  gathering 
with  so  much  care  !  How  that  one  prodigal  clump  seemed 
to  have  drunk  suddenly  dry  the  whole  over-running  beakers 
of  summer  to  keep  their  fiery  madness  at  its  height." 

For  the  sake  of  Mrs.  Lowell,  whose  health  was 
failing,  Lowell  and  his  wife  spent  a  year  in  Europe, 
passing  most  of  that  time  in  Italy,  returning  to 
America  in  1852.  In  the  autumn  of  the  following 
year  Mrs.  Lowell  died. 

On  the  ninth  of  January,  1855,  Lowell  delivered 
the  first  lecture  of  a  semi-weekly  course  of  twelve 
lectures  on  the  English  Poets  at  the  Lowell  Institute, 
Boston.  These  lectures  excited  much  favorable  notice, 
in  consequence  of  which  Lowell  was  appointed  to  the 
chair  of  belles  lettres  and  modern  languages  in  Harvard 
made  vacant  by  the  resignation  of  Longfellow.  He 
was  granted  two  years'  leave  of  absence,  and  went  to 
Europe  to  prepare  himself  for  his  college  duties.  Of 
his  difficulties  with  the  grammatical  intricacies  of  the 
German  language,  he  writes  humorously  from  Dres 
den  to  a  friend :  "  If  I  die,  I  shall  have  carved  on  my 
tombstone  that  I  died  of  der  die  das,  —  not  because  I 
caught  'em,  but  because  I  could  n't."  However,  he 
caught  them  sufficiently  well  to  enter  upon  his  pro 
fessorial  duties  in  1857.  This  same  year  he  was 
married  to  his  daughter's  governess,  Miss  Frances 
Dunlap,  a  woman  of  rare  spirituality.  In  addition 
to  his  college  duties,  he  was  editor-in-chief  of  the 
"Atlantic  Monthly"  from  1857  till  1862,  and  in 
conjunction  with  Charles  Eliot  Norton  edited  the 
"  North  American  Review  "  from  1864  till  1873. 


316    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Lowell's  college  work  was  not  congenial  to  him, 
and  when  he  was  released  from  it  after  twenty  years 
of  service,  he  wrote :  — • 

"I  never  was  good  for  much  as  a  professor  —  once  a 
week,  perhaps,  at  the  best,  when  I  could  manage  to  get  into 
some  conceit  of  myself  and  so  could  put  a  little  of  my  go 
into  the  boys.  The  rest  of  the  time  my  desk  was  as  good  as 
I ;  and  then,  on  the  other  hand,  my  being  professor  was  not 
good  for  me  —  it  damped  my  gunpowder,  as  it  were,  and 
my  mind,  when  it  took  fire  at  all  (which  was  n't  often) 
drawled  off  in  an  unwilling  fuse  instead  of  leaping  to  meet 
the  first  spark.  Since  I  have  discharged  my  soul  of  it  and 
see  the  callus  on  my  ankle  where  the  ball  and  chain  used  to 
be,  subsiding  gradually  to  smooth  skin,  I  feel  like  dancing 
round  the  table  as  I  used  when  I  was  twenty  to  let  oif  my 
animal  spirits.  If  I  were  a  profane  man,  I  should  say, '  Darn 
the  college  ! '  " 

But  this  must  not  be  taken  too  literally  in  so  far  as 
Lowell's  teaching  goes.  A  man  like  Lowell,  of  ex 
uberant  spirits  and  tireless  swift  intellectual  energy, 
is  the  best  of  all  lessons  and  the  finest  of  all  inspira 
tions  in  himself  alone.  There  was  nothing  of  the 
conventional  professor  about  him.  He  was  careless 
about  the  mechanical  details  of  his  work,  the  correc 
tion  of  examination  papers,  the  making  out  of  per- 
cents,  the  pedantic  insistence  upon  the  etymological 
and  grammatical  features  of  the  text  of  a  classic. 
For  all  that,  he  had  no  time  and  less  inclination; 
but  he  knew  how  to  get  the  heart  and  brain  of  a 
book  and  to  hold  them  up  quivering  with  life  before 
his  eager  pupils.  He  opened  to  them  a  vast  new 
world  of  ideas  and  feelings,  and  left  them  richer  than 
they  knew,  or  he  either. 


James  Russell  Lowell  317 

We  owe  to  these  college  years  the  best  of  his  fine 
criticism  in  "Among  my  Books "  (1870)  and  "My 
Study  Windows  "  (1872).  To  a  lady  in  London,  in 
reference  to  the  second  volume  of  "  Among  my 
Books,"  he  says :  — 

"  I  am  never  happy  when  I  am  writing  about  books  that  I 
like.  I  had  much  rather  like  them  and  say  nothing  about 
them,  —  for  one  should  be  secret  about  one's  loves  and  not 
betray  the  confidence  they  have  put  in  one.  But  I  had  to 
write  because  I  had  foolishly  allowed  myself  to  be  made  a 
professor,  and  you  will  understand  better  the  defects  of  some 
of  my  essays  when  I  tell  you  that  they  were  patched  to 
gether  from  my  lectures,  leaving  out  a  great  part  of  the 
illustrative  matter,  and  compressing  rather  than  dilating,  as 
one  should  do  for  a  miscellaneous  audience.'7 

But  these  volumes  of  criticism  are  not  the  only 
works  which  Lowell  produced  in  his  twenty  years  of 
college  service.  On  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War 
the  "  Biglow  Papers  "  were  renewed,  and  this  second 
series  was  published  in  book  form  in  1867.  "  Fire 
side  Travels,"  a  delightful  volume  of  prose,  dedicated 
to  his  lifelong  friend,  the  sculptor  and  poet,  William 
Wetmore  Story,  appeared  in  1864.  Another  volume 
of  poems,  "  Under  the  Willows,"  was  given  to  the 
public  in  1869,  the  year  that  also  saw  the  publication 
of  his  long,  reflective  poem,  "  The  Cathedral."  The 
best  of  the  poems  in  the  collection  "  Under  the  Wil 
lows"-— "The  Snow  Fall,"  "Aladdin,"  "Pictures 
from  Appledore,"  "  The  Dead  House,"  "  Auf  Wieder- 
sehen,"  "The  Finding  of  the  Lyre,"  "After  the 
Burial,"  "In  the  Twilight"  —  are  the  expression  of 
real  feeling,  and  sing  themselves  without  effort.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  the  most  popular  of  his  earlier 


318     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

short  poems, —  "The  Present  Crisis,"  "Columbus," 
"To  a  Dandelion,"  "The  Heritage,"  "My  Love," 
"  The  Changeling,"  "  An  Indian  Summer  Reverie," 
and  the  fine  sonnet  containing  the  well-known  lines, 

"  BE  NOBLE  !  and  the  nobleness  that  lies 
In  other  men,  sleeping  but  never  dead, 
Will  rise  in  majesty  to  meet  thine  own." 

The  title  "  Under  the  Willows  "  was  chosen  in  com 
memoration  of  a  row  of  six  large  willows  terminating 
what  was  called  New  Road,  leading  into  Cambridge 
from  the  West.  These  fine  old  trees  —  "  such  trees 
Paul  Potter  never  dreamed  nor  drew "  —  were  the 
remains  of  a  stockade  erected  in  the  early  Colonial 
days  as  a  defence  of  the  settlement.  "  Three  Me 
morial  Poems"  (1876)  — the  "Concord  Ode," 
"  Under  the  Old  Elm,"  and  "  An  Ode  for  the  Fourth 
of  July,  1 876  "  —  complete  Lowell's  literary  work  until 
his  appointment  as  minister  to  Spain  in  1877.  After 
this  event,  which  was  a  turning-point  in  his  career, 
his  published  writings  were  chiefly  of  a  political 
nature:  "  Democracy  and  Other  Addresses  "  (1886), 
"Political  Essays"  (1888),  a  slender  volume  of  verse, 
"Heartsease  and  Rue"  (1888),  and  a  volume  of 
critical  miscellany,  "  Latest  Literary  Essays  "  (1891). 
Lowell's  life  in  Madrid  was  by  no  means  a  life  of 
social  pleasures  and  official  duties.  He  found  time 
to  read  a  great  deal,  and  he  took  up  a  thorough 
study  of  the  Spanish  language.  He  writes  from 
Madrid  in  the  summer  of  1878:  — 

"  I  have  turned  school-boy  again,  and  have  a  master  over 
me  once  more  .  .  .  who  comes  to  me  every  morning  at  nine 
o'clock  for  an  hour.  We  talk  Spanish  together  (he  does  n't 


James  Russell  Lowell  319 

know  a  word  of  English),  and  I  work  hard  at  translation  and 
the  like.  I  am  now  translating  a  story  of  Octave  Feuillet 
into  choice  Castilian,  and  mean  to  know  Spanish  as  well  as 
I  do  English  before  I  have  done  with  it.  This  morning  I 
wrote  a  note  to  one  of  the  papers  here  in  which  my  teacher 
found  only  a  single  word  to  change.  Was  n't  that  pretty 
well  for  a  boy  of  my  standing  ?  "  •  ; 

In  1880  Lowell  was  sent  from  Spain  as  minister  to 
England,  in  which  official  capacity  he  served  his 
country  for  another  period  of  three  years.  He  loved 
London.  Many  years  before  going  there,  he  had 
written  to  a  friend :  "  I  fancy  if  I  were  suddenly 
snatched  away  to  London,  my  brain  would  prickle 
all  over  as  a  foot  that  has  been  asleep  when  the 
blood  starts  in  it  again.  Books  are  good  dry  forage ; 
we  can  keep  alive  on  them,  but,  after  all,  men  are  the 
only  fresh  pasture."  Now,  in  the  large  free  life  of 
the  world's  metropolis,  he  enjoyed  this  fresh  pasture 
to  his  heart's  content.  He  was  very  popular  in  Eng 
land.  His  social  gifts,  his  happy  facility  in  making 
public  addresses,  his  fame  as  a  writer,  did  honor  to 
the  country  he  represented,  and  delighted  the  nation 
to  which  he  had  gone.  For  nine  years  after  his  ap 
pointment  to  England,  he  regularly  spent  his  sum 
mers  in  the  romantic  old  town  of  Whitby,  where  the 
famous  old  abbey,  the  changing  lights  of  the  sea, 
and  the  moors  purpled  with  heather  were  a  source  of 
endless  delight  to  him.  His  wife  died  in  1885,  and 
he  rented  the  old  homestead  at  Cambridge,  feeling  it 
too  painful  in  the  first  sharp  grief  over  his  loss  to  go 
back  to  meet  the  ghosts  of  former  happiness.  But 
in  the  fall  of  1889  he  returned  there  to  live  with  his 
daughter,  Mrs.  Burnett,  and  her  family.  He  would 


320    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

not  have  the  leaves  raked  away  from  the  lawn,  "  for 
the  rustle  of  them,"  he  said,  "  stirs  my  earliest  mem 
ories,  and  when  the  wind  blows,  they  pirouette  so 
gayly  as  to  give  me  cheerful  thoughts  of  death.  But, 
oh,  the  changes ! " 

He  lived  two  years  to  enjoy  this  old  home,  from 
which  much  of  the  joy  to  him  had  fled  in  those  sad 
changes  over  which  he  sighed,  and  after  several 
attacks  of  illness  he  died  on  the  twelfth  of  August, 
1891.  He  was  buried  in  Mt.  Auburn  Cemetery, 
where  the  ashes  of  so  many  illustrious  New  England- 
ers  lie.  His  grave,  on  the  lower  slope  of  a  grassy 
ridge,  is  shaded  by  a  large  elm,  and  marked  by  a 
simple,  low  slab  of  blue  slate. 

Of  all  American  writers,  Lowell  had  the  largest, 
warmest  nature.  A  certain  freshness,  a  buoyant  and 
youthful  vigor,  abound  in  him  from  his  earliest  to  his 
latest  years.  In  his  beautiful  poem  commemorating 
Agassiz,  he  says :  — 

"  He  was  so  human !  whether  strong  or  weak, 
Far  from  his  kind  he  neither  sank  nor  soared." 

One  feels  that  the  lines  were  made  for  Lowell, 
too.  He  was  so  human!  Unconventional,  full  of 
noble  impulses  that  were  translated  into  imme 
diate  action,  generous,  brave,  loyal-hearted,  cheery, 
sparkling  with  wit,  exuberant  in  spirits,  full  of  affec 
tion  and  tenderness,  and  full  of  bright  humor,  too, 
scornful  only  of  what  is  base,  unjust,  and  cruel, 
—  his  is  the  most  attractive  personality  in  our 
literature.  His  tenderness,  his  susceptibility,  were 
almost  feminine.  He  once  wrote  in  his  earlier 
years:  — 


James  Russell  Lowell  321 

"  I  pass  through  the  world,  and  meet  scarcely  a  response 
to  the  affectionateness  of  my  nature.  I  believe  Maria  only 
knows  how  loving  I  am  truly.  Brought  up  in  a  very  reserved 
and  conventional  family,  I  cannot  in  society  appear  what  I 
really  am.  I  go  out  sometimes  with  my  heart  so  full  of  yearn 
ing  towards  my  fellows  that  the  indifferent  look  with  which 
even  entire  strangers  pass  me  by  brings  tears  into  my  eyes." 

And  yet  he  had  a  virile  contempt,  mixed,  he  says, 
with  pity  for  all  the  weaknesses  of  the  poetical  tem 
perament, —  the  mawkish  sentimentality  that  is  so 
apt  to  sour  into  cynicism,  the  over-sensitiveness  that 
responds  so  keenly  to  the  merest  trifles,  and  the  soli 
tariness  and  egotism  that  grow  out  of  this  morbid 
irritability.  He  might  himself  have  been  a  victim  of 
these  weaknesses,  had  not  the  "  immense  ballast  of 
common  sense  "  with  which  he  was  endowed  steadied 
him  and  helped  to  keep  him  rooted  in  the  real.  He 
says  in  one  of  his  letters  :  — 

"  I  find  myself  very  curiously  compounded  of  two  distinct 
characters.  One  half  of  me  is  clear  mystic  and  enthusiast, 
and  the  other  humorist.  If  I  had  lived  as  solitary  as  a  hermit  of 
the  Thebais,  I  doubt  not  that  I  should  have  had  as  authentic  in 
terviews  with  the  evil  one  as  they ;  and,  without  any  disrespect 
to  the  saint,  it  would  have  taken  very  little  to  have  made  a  St. 
Francis  of  me.  Indeed,  during  that  part  of  my  life  in  which 
I  lived  most  alone,  I  was  never  a  single  night  unvisited  by 
visions,  and  once  I  thought  I  had  a  personal  revelation  from 
God  himself.  I  can  believe  perfectly  in  the  sincerity  of  those 
who  are  commonly  called  religious  impostors,  for  at  one  time 
a  meteor  could  not  fall,  nor  lightning  flash,  that  I  did  not  in 
some  way  connect  it  with  my  own  interior  life  and  destiny. 
On  the  other  hand,  had  I  mixed  more  with  the  world  than  I 
have,  I  should  probably  have  become  a  Pantagruelist." 


322    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

An  extraordinary  youthfulness  of  feeling,  the  feel 
ing  that  beyond  all  others  belongs  most  peculiarly  to 
genius,  characterized  Lowell  all  his  life.  Writing  in 
his  seventy-first  year,  he  says :  — 

"Thank  God,  I  am  as  young  as  ever.  There  is  an 
exhaustless  fund  of  inexperience  somewhere  about  me,  a 
Fortunatus  purse  that  keeps  me  so.  I  have  had  my  share 
of  bitter  experiences,  but  they  have  left  no  black  drop  behind 
them  in  my  blood  — pour  mefaire  envisager  la  vie  en  noir" 

He  loved  the  earth  and  the  life  on  it,  not  with  that 
melancholy  need  of  seeking  solace  in  nature  which 
many  modern  poets  feel,  but  with  a  love  that  was 
wholly  sympathy  with  its  joyous  pulse-beats.  Here 
is  a  characteristic  outburst  from  one  of  his  letters 
which  will  illustrate  this  feeling :  — 

"  I  wanted  to  tell  you  what  glorious  fall  weather  we  are 
having,  clear  and  champagny,  the  northwest  wind  crisping 
Fresh  Pond  to  steel  blue,  and  curling  the  wet  lily-pads  over 
till  they  bloom  in  a  sudden  flash  of  golden  sunshine.  How  I 
do  love  the  earth  !  I  feel  it  thrill  under  my  feet.  I  feel  some 
how  as  if  it  were  conscious  of  my  love,  as  if  something  passed 
into  my  dancing  blood  from  it,  and  I  get  rid  of  that  dreadful 
duty-feeling,  '  What  right  have  I  to  be  ? '  and  not  a  golden-rod 
of  them  all  soaks  in  the  sunshine,  or  feels  the  blue  currents 
of  the  air  eddy  about  him  more  thoughtlessly  than  I." 

Much  of  this  fulness  of  life  in  him  showed  in  his 
animated  face  and  active  figure.  He  was  not  above 
middle  height,  but  was  robust  enough  to  carry  the 
impression  of  health  and  endurance.  His  gray  eyes 
brightened  with  his  gayer  moods  and  gave  vivacity  to 
a  face  framed  by  a  full  beard,  lighter  and  redder  in 
color  than  his  dark  auburn  hair. 


James  Russell  Lowell  323 

Lowell's  letters  edited  by  Charles  Eliot  Norton  are 
the  best  record  that  we  have  of  his  personality  in  his 
social  relations.  Viewed  in  that  light,  they  do  not 
make  too  prominent  the  lighter,  gayer  side  of  his 
character.  Glimpses  we  have,  also,  of  that  other, 
deeply  serious  side  of  him,  but  they  are  only  glimpses. 
The  revelation  of  that  side  is  to  be  found  in  his  works. 
"  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal "  is  one  of  the  finest  ex 
pressions  of  it,  as  well  as  the  most  perfect  of  his 
poems.  The  subject  is  an  original  treatment  of  the 
old  legend  of  the  Holy  Grail,  the  fabled  cup  out  of 
which  Christ  drank  at  the  Last  Supper,  and  the  quest 
of  which  was  the  favorite  enterprise  of  the  knights  of 
the  Round  Table. 

The  prelude  to  the  first  part  of  the  poem  fairly 
brims  over  with  spring  juices  and  sunshine.  In  the 
universal  well-being  of  this  happy  season, 

"  'T  is  as  easy  now  for  the  heart  to  be  true 
As  for  grass  to  be  green  and  skies  to  be  blue, 
'T  is  the  natural  way  of  living ;  " 

and  Sir  Launfal  remembers  his  vow  to  recover  the 
Holy  Grail.  He  commands  his  golden  spurs  and 
richest  mail  to  be  brought  to  him,  and  declares  he 
shall  not  lie  in  a  bed  again  until  he  has  kept  his  vow ; 
and  sinking  down  on  a  bed  of  rushes,  he  hopes  for  a 
guiding  vision,  which  comes  to  him  in  this  wise : 

From  the  frowning,  gray  old  castle  whose  gates  are 
shut  to  all  but  lord  or  lady  of  high  degree,  the  young 
knight  sets  forth  on  his  quest.  A  hideous  leper  at  the 
castle  gate  begs  an  alms  of  him,  and,  in  loathing  of 
him  as  a  blot  on  the  summer  morning,  he  disdainfully 
flings  him  a  coin.  The  leper  refuses  to  lift  it  from  the 
dust,  and  reproaches  him  for  giving  worthless  gold 


324    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

from  a  sense  of  duty,  and  withholding  the  richer  alms 
of  his  heart's  warm  sympathy. 

The  prelude  to  part  second  begins  with  a  descrip 
tion  of  winter  in  all  its  bleakness  and  bareness ;  and 
in  part  second,  Sir  Launfal,  a  worn  old  man,  returns 
to  his  castle  to  find  another  heir  in  his  earldom,  and 
himself  shut  out  from  the  Christmas  cheer  and  ruddy 
blaze  within  the  castle  walls.  He  falls  into  a  reverie, 
warming  himself  with  the  memory  of  desert  heats  in 
Oriental  lands,  when  suddenly  he  is  aroused  by  the 
voice  of  a  beggar,  and  lifting  his  eyes,  sees  the  leper 
before  him  again.  Sir  Launfal  is  touched  with  pity 
now :  he  has  known  sorrow  himself,  and  heartache, 
discouragement,  and  despair;  for  he  has  come  back 
from  his  weary  search  without  the  Holy  Grail.  He 
has  no  gold  to  give,  but  love  and  pity  are  in  his  heart ; 
he  shares  his  broken  crust  with  the  leper,  and  breaking 
the  ice  from  the  brink  of  a  streamlet,  he  offers  him 
drink  from  a  wooden  bowl,  —  when  lo  !  the  leper  is 
suddenly  transfigured  into  the  image  of  Christ,  the 
poor  wooden  bowl  into  the  shining  Holy  Grail,  and 
he  hears  a  soft  voice  saying,  — 

"  Lo,  it  is  I,  be  not  afraid  ! 
In  many  climes  without  avail, 
Thou  hast  spent  thy  life  for  the  Holy  Grail ; 
Behold,  it  is  here,  —  this  cup  which  thou 
Didst  fill  at  the  streamlet  for  Me  but  now  ; 
This  crust  is  My  body  broken  for  thee, 
This  water  His  blood  that  died  on  the  tree ; 
The  Holy  Supper  is  kept,  indeed, 
In  whatso  we  share  with  another's  need  : 
Not  what  we  give,  but  what  we  share,  — 
For  the  gift  without  the  giver  is  bare ; 
Who  gives  himself  with  his  alms  feeds  three,  — 
Himself,  his  hungering  neighbor,  and  Me." 


James  Russell  Lowell  325 

At  this,  Sir  Launfal  awakes,  understands  the  beautiful 
significance  of  the  vision,  and  orders  his  armor  to  be 
hung  on  the  wall,  saying  that  the  Holy  Grail  is  found 
here  in  his  castle,  and  he  throws  its  doors  wide  open 
to  all,  rich  and  poor  alike,  — 

"  And  there 's  no  poor  man  in  the  North  Countree, 
But  is  lord  of  the  earldom  as  much  as  he." 

The  poetical  part  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers  "  is  written 
in  the  Yankee  dialect,  a  dialect  which  Lowell  loved. 
"  To  me,"  he  says,  "  the  dialect  was  native,  was  spoken 
all  about  me  when  a  boy  at  a  time  when  an  Irish  day- 
laborer  was  as  rare  as  an  American  one  now.  Since 
then  I  have  made  a  study  of  it  so  far  as  opportunity 
allowed.  But  when  I  write  in  it,  it  is  as  in  a  mother- 
tongue,  and  I  am  carried  back  to  long  ago  noonings 
in  my  father's  hayfields,  and  to  the  talk  of  Sam  and 
Job  over  their  jug  of  blackstrap  under  the  shade  of  the 
ash-tree  which  still  dapples  the  grass  whence  they 
have  been  gone  so  long."  That  he  used  the  dialect 
with  the  vigor  and  freedom  of  a  mother-tongue,  the 
witty,  satirical,  and  sometimes  pathetically  beautiful 
lines  in  the  " Biglow  Papers"  most  unmistakably 
show. 

The  "  Biglow  Papers  "  is  a  political  satire  that  has 
become  a  classic.  What  was  local  and  temporary  in 
its  themes  is  so  bound  up  in  Lowell's  treatment  of 
them  with  what  is  universal  and  abiding  in  human 
nature,  that  it  gives  almost  as  lively  a  pleasure  to-day 
as  in  the  stirring  times  in  which  it  was  written.  It 
is  introduced  by  a  ludicrous  imitation  of  press-notices, 
among  which  is  a  capital  parody  of  Carlyle's  peculiar 
phraseology,  entitled  "  From  the  World-Harmonic- 


326    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

^Eolian-Attachment."  The  chief  characters  in  the 
satire  are  Homer  Wilbur,  pastor  of  the  First  Church 
in  Jaalam,  and  his  gifted  parishioner,  the  young 
farmer  poet,  Hosea  Biglow,  of  whom  his  pastor  says 
that  in  mowing  "  he  cuts  a  cleaner  and  wider  swath 
than  any  man  in  town."  And  he  can  cut  just  as  clean 
a  swath  with  his  pen  through  cant,  injustice,  and 
political  quackery.  Birdofredum  Sawin,  another  char 
acter,  represents  the  weak,  easily  influenced,  time 
serving  politician  who  trims  his  sails  to  catch  all  the 
winds  that  blow,  and  has  no  other  aim  in  life  than  his 
own  immediate  pleasure  and  profit.  The  public 
journalist  who  leads  his  sheep  for  the  sake  of  the 
mutton ;  the  poltroonery  of  the  clergyman  "  who 
chooses  to  walk  off  to  the  extreme  edge  of  the  world 
and  to  sow  such  seed  as  he  has  clear  over  into  that 
darkness  which  he  calls  the  next  life ;  "  the  presiden 
tial  candidate's  letter  of  acceptance  that,  like  the 
ancient  oracle,  conveys  no  meaning  at  all  or  an 
accommodatingly  equivocal  one,  being  subject,  like 
the  beast  in  the  Apocalypse,  to  as  many  several  inter 
pretations  as  there  are  minds  brought  to  bear  upon 
it, —  all  these  are  treated  with  admirable  scorn,  and 
help  to  keep  the  book  alive.  Then,  too,  it  would  be 
hard  to  match  anywhere  the  pathos,  the  quick  heart 
throbs  of  agony  and  longing  that  tremble  through 
the  poem  that  Hosea  Biglow  addresses  to  the  editor 
of  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  in  answer  to  the  latter's 
request  to  be  funny.  Real  tears  watered  the  writing 
of  that  poem,  and  the  glitter  of  them  seems  to  rest 
on  it  still. 

The  deep  feeling  and  high  purpose  that  underlie 
the  humor,  the  clever  satire  and  the  bursts  of  indigna- 


James  Russell  Lowell  327 

tion  in  the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  may  be  traced  again  in 
the  Memorial  Odes.  The  fine  portraitures  of  Lincoln 
and  Washington  in  the  "  Harvard  Commemoration 
Ode "  and  in  "  Under  the  Old  Elm,"  are  quite  un 
equalled.  They  belong  to  a  class  of  literary  work 
in  which  Lowell  excelled,  and  for  which  his  critical 
faculty  particularly  fitted  him.  The  "  Fable  for 
Critics,"  in  spite  of  many  lines  that  are  hardly  better 
than  doggerel,  contains,  with  the  exception  of  the 
lines  on  Thoreau,  wonderfully  true  and  clever  analyses 
of  our  principal  writers. 

To  Thoreau,  Lowell  was  always  unjust.  His  own 
warm  social  nature  and  his  indebtedness  to  his  fellow- 
men  for  the  broader  development  of  his  genius 
wholly  unfitted  him  to  understand  or  appreciate  the 
colder  temperament  of  Thoreau,  whose  peculiar  gifts 
required  an  altogether  different  atmosphere  for  their 
development.  He  treats  the  Walden  episode,  not  as 
such,  but  as  the  actual  existence  of  the  man,  —  as  if 
he  were  a  life-long  hermit  quarrelling  with  civilization. 
Yet,  with  singular  inconsistency,  he  comments  with 
charming  indulgence  upon  the  scholar's  aloofness 
from  the  busy  affairs  of  the  world  in  his  essay  on 
Gray,  where  he  notices  Gilbert  White's  recording  the 
awakening  and  coming  forth  from  his  dormitory  of 
an  old  tortoise  at  Lewes,  Sussex,  when  news  of  Bur- 
goyne's  surrender  must  have  reached  England  about 
that  time.  "  It  may  argue  pusillanimity,"  writes 
Lowell,  "  but  I  can  hardly  help  envying  the  remorse 
less  indifference  of  such  men  to  the  burning  questions 
of  the  hour,  at  the  first  alarm  of  which  we  are  all 
expected  to  run  with  buckets,  or  it  may  be  with  our 
can  of  kerosene,  snatched  by  mistake  in  the  hurry  and 


328    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

confusion."  He  dwells  lovingly  on  Izaak  Walton's 
sequestered  life  during  the  tumult  of  civil  and  foreign 
war,  saying:  — 

"  So  far  as  he  himself  could  shape  its  course,  it  leads  us 
under  the  shadow  of  honeysuckle  hedges,  or  along  the  rushy 
banks  of  silence-loving  streams,  or  through  the  claustral 
hush  of  Cathedral  closes,  or  where  the  shadow  of  the  village 
church-tower  creeps  round  the  dial  of  green  grass  below,  or 
to  the  company  of  thoughtful  and  godly  men.  .  .  .  Whether 
such  fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue  as  his  comes  within  the 
sweep  of  Milton's  gravely  cadenced  lash  or  not,  —  whether 
a  man  does  not  owe  himself  more  to  the  distasteful  publicity 
of  active  citizenship  than  to  the  petting  of  his  own  private 
tastes  or  talents  as  Walton  thought  it  right  and  found  it  sweet 
to  do,  may  be  a  question.  There  can  be  none  that  the  con 
templation  of  such  a  life  both  soothes  and  charms,  and  we 
sigh  to  think  that  the  like  of  it  is  possible  no  more.  Where, 
now,  would  the  fugitive  from  the  espials  of  our  modern  life 
find  a  sanctuary  which  telegraph  or  telephone  had  not  de 
flowered?  I  do  not  mean  that  Walton  was  an  idle  man, 
who,  as  time  was  given  him  for  nothing,  thought  that  he 
might  part  with  it  for  nothing,  too.  If  he  had  been,  I  should 
not  be  writing  this.  He  left  behind  him  two  books,  each  a 
masterpiece  in  its  own  simple  and  sincere  way ;  and  only  the 
contemplative  leisure  of  a  life  like  his  could  have  secreted 
the  precious  qualities  that  assure  them  against  decay." 

A  little  more  indulgence  in  his  criticism  of  Thoreau, 
who  answers  his  question  as  to  the  possibility  of  find 
ing  a  man,  now,  whom  the  world  could  not  find, 
would  have  given  us  a  truer  portraiture  of  a  rarely 
gifted  spirit,  whose  contemplative  life  secreted  the 
precious  qualities,  not  of  two  only,  but  of  many 
books  that  will  live.  But  with  the  exception  of  his 


James  Russell  Lowell  329 

judgment  on  Thoreau,  and  possibly  his  interpretation 
of  Carlyle,  there  is  very  little  to  quarrel  with  in 
Lowell's  criticism  both  in  prose  and  verse.  He  had 
read  widely  and  with  keen  appetite.  He  knew  men, 
and  had  never  shared  the  romantic  dreams  of  the 
Transcendentalists.  He  tested  what  he  read  by  his 
knowledge  of  life  as  he  had  seen  and  felt  it.  By  that 
standard  he  detected  instantly  what  was  fine  and 
true,  and  what  was  mean  and  false.  It  is  the  critic's 
only  true  standard,  but  it  is  safe  only  when  the  critic 
himself  has  a  large  nature  and  a  clear  eye.  Lowell 
had  both.  How  he  rejoices  in  the  hearty  freshness, 
sincerity,  and  simplicity  of  Chaucer !  He  is  always 
delightful  when  he  speaks  of  him,  yet  not  more  so 
than  when  he  writes  of  Dryden,  who  was  almost 
Chaucer's  antithesis,  and  of  whom,  when  he  reads 
him,  he  says  that  he  "  cannot  help  thinking  of  an 
ostrich  to  be  classed  among  flying  things  and  ca 
pable,  what  with  leap  and  flap  together,  of  leaving 
the  earth  for  a  longer  or  shorter  space,  but  loving 
the  open  plain,  where  wing  and  foot  help  each  other 
to  something  that  is  both  flight  and  run  at  once." 

Lowell  has  no  sympathy  with  pessimism,  cynicism^ 
or  sentimentality.  His  criticism  stands  for  a  wise 
optimism  and  a  joyous  sympathy  with  life.  He  calls 
the  sentimentalist  a  — 

"  spiritual  hypochondriac,  with  whom  fancies  become  facts, 
while  facts  are  a  discomfort  because  they  will  not  be  evapo 
rated  into  fancy.  Theory  is  too  fine  a  dame  to  confess  even 
a  country  cousinship  with  coarse-handed  Practice,  whose 
homely  ways  would  disconcert  her  artificial  world.  The 
very  susceptibility  which  makes  him  quick  to  feel  makes 
him  also  incapable  of  deep  and  durable  feeling.  He  loves 


330    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

to  think  he  suffers,  and  keeps  a  pet  sorrow,  a  blue  devil 
familiar  that  goes  with  him  everywhere,  like  Paracelsus'  black 
dog.  .  .  .  We  do  not  think  the  worse  of  Goethe  for  hypotheti- 
cally  desolating  himself  in  the  fashion  aforesaid  (Werther), 
for  with  many  constitutions  it  is  as  purely  natural  a  crisis  as 
dentition,  which  the  stronger  worry  through,  and  turn  out 
very  sensible,  agreeable  fellows.  But  whenever  there  is  an 
arrest  of  development,  and  the  heart-break  of  the  patient  is 
audibly  prolonged  through  life,  we  have  a  spectacle  which 
the  toughest  heart  would  wish  to  get  as  far  away  from  as 
possible.  We  would  not  be  supposed  to  overlook  the  dis 
tinction  too  often  lost  sight  of,  between  sentimentalism  and 
sentiment,  the  latter  being  a  very  excellent  thing  in  its  way, 
as  genuine  things  are  apt  to  be.  Sentiment  is  intellectual 
emotion,  —  emotion  precipitated,  as  it  were,  in  pretty  crystals 
by  the  fancy.  ...  It  puts  into  words  for  us  that  decorous 
average  of  feeling  to  the  expression  of  which  society  can 
consent  without  danger  of  being  indiscreetly  moved.  It  is 
excellent  for  people  who  are  willing  to  save  their  souls  alive  to 
any  extent  that  shall  not  be  discomposing.  It  is  even  satisfy 
ing  until  some  deeper  experience  has  given  us  a  hunger  for 
what  we  so  glibly  call  '  the  world  '  cannot  sate,  just  as  water- 
ice  is  nourishment  enough  to  a  man  who  has  just  had  his 
dinner.  .  .  .  True  sentiment  is  emotion  ripened  by  a  slow 
ferment  of  the  mind,  and  qualified  to  an  agreeable  temperance 
by  that  taste  which  is  the  conscience  of  polite  society." 

Elsewhere  he  says :  — 

"  Poets  have  forgotten  that  the  first  lesson  of  literature,  no 
less  than  of  life,  is  the  learning  how  to  burn  your  own 
smoke ;  that  the  way  to  be  original  is  to  be  healthy ;  that 
the  fresh  color,  so  delightful  in  all  good  writing,  is  won  by 
escaping  from  the  fixed  air  of  self  into  the  brisk  atmosphere 
of  universal  sentiments,  and  that  to  make  the  common  mar 
vellous  as  if  it  were  a  revelation  is  the  test  of  genius," 


James  Russell  Lowell  331 

At  its  best,  Lowell's  prose  shows  unmistakable 
traces  of  the  poet.  He  is  never  at  a  loss  for  an  image 
or  a  picture.  Writing  of  Chaucer,  he  says  that  — 

"  his  best  tales  run  on  like  one  of  our  inland  rivers, 
sometimes  hastening  a  little  and  turning  upon  themselves 
in  eddies  that  dimple  while  retarding  the  current;  some 
times  loitering  smoothly,  while  here  and  there  a  quiet  thought, 
a  tender  feeling,  a  pleasant  image,  a  golden-hearted  verse 
opens  quietly  as  a  water-lily  to  float  on  the  surface  without 
breaking  it  into  ripple." 

Speaking  of  that  natural  indifference  to  beauty  in 
vulgar  souls  that  cannot  recognize  it  for  themselves 
and  feign  an  admiration  for  what  is  celebrated  as 
admirable,  he  says :  — • 

"  I  remember  people  who  had  to  go  over  the  Alps  to  learn 
what  the  divine  silence  of  snow  was,  —  who  must  run  to  Italy 
before  they  were  conscious  of  the  miracle  wrought  every 
day  under  their  very  noses  by  the  sunset,  —  who  must  call 
upon  the  Berkshire  Hills  to  teach  them  what  a  painter 
autumn  was,  while  close  at  hand  the  Fresh  Pond  meadows 
made  all  orioles  cheap  with  hues  that  showed  as  if  a  sunset 
cloud  had  been  wrecked  among  their  maples." 

But  his  prose  is  not  always  so  simple  and  fine  as 
that.  He  dreaded  above  everything  to  talk  like  a 
book.  "  There  is  death  in  the  dictionary,"  he  says, 
"  and  where  language  is  too  strictly  limited  by  con 
vention,  the  ground  for  expression  to  grow  is  limited 
also ;  and  we  get  a  potted  literature,  —  Chinese 
dwarfs  instead  of  healthy  trees."  He  is  never  tired 
of  praising  that  simplicity  of  expression  which 
"  leaves  criticism  helpless  by  the  mere  light  of  nature 
alone."  Yet  he  was  himself  by  no  means  a  simple 


332    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

writer.  His  vocabulary  contains  many  unusual 
words  as  well  as  very  many  trite  ones,  and  he  is 
fond  of  piecing  out  his  velvet  with  cotton,  or  of 
wearing  the  laborer's  soiled  blouse  over  the  pro 
fessor's  gown.  It  is  as  if  he  were  always  fearful  of 
playing  the  pedant,  or  carrying  his  learning  as  if 
it  were  an  uncomfortable  weight.  This  strain  after 
ease  that  so  plainly  evinces  uneasiness  gives  to  his 
prose  at  times  a  disagreeable  impression  of  incon 
gruity,  just  as  his  humor  is  sometimes  impertinently 
obtrusive  and  spoils  a  serious  passage  with  its 
waggery.  These  faults  are  not  to  be  found  in  his 
public  addresses  delivered  in  England,  nor  in  his 
political  essays,  which  should  be  read  by  every 
student  of  American  history  and  every  citizen  of 
the  United  States.  They  are  thickly  sown  with 
maxims  of  political  wisdom,  and  are  characterized 
throughout  by  uncompromising  logic  and  common- 
sense,  shrewd  and  biting  sarcasm,  and  admit  not 
a  word  for  mere  rhetoric's  sake,  not  a  playful  relax 
ing  by  so  much  as  a  smile  of  tense  feeling  and 
earnest  expression  of  it.  They  are  as  fine  in  their 
way  as  anything  Lowell  has  written,  and  add  lustre 
to  those  masterpieces  of  criticism  and  poetry  that 
will  keep  his  memory  green. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

FRANCIS   PARKMAN    (1823-1893) 

FRANCIS  PARKMAN,  the  son  of  a  Unitarian 
clergyman,  was  born  in  Boston,  Massachusetts, 
on  the  sixteenth  of  September,  1823.  He  was  of  a 
delicate  constitution  from  his  earliest  childhood ;  but 
his  intellect  was  so  active  and  daring,  and  he  threw 
himself  with  so  much  zest  into  whatever  inquiry 
interested  him,  that  his  accomplishments  even  in 
his  boyhood  would  have  been  remarkable  in  one 
of  rugged  health.  Fond  at  all  times  of  out-door  life, 
his  earliest  interests  were  in  the  direction  of  natural 
history.  He  made  extensive  collections,  and  roamed 
the  woods,  learning  to  fish  and  hunt,  and  acquiring 
that  acquaintance  with  nature  which  was  to  make 
him  the  most  picturesque  of  historians.  An  eager 
interest  in  chemistry  succeeded  his  passion  for  col 
lecting,  and  for  a  time  he  devoted  himself  exclusively 
to  chemical  experiments. 

In  1840  he  entered  Harvard  College,  and  not  long 
afterward  formed  the  design  of  writing  a  history  of 
the  French  in  North  America.  In  his  preface  to 
"  Count  Frontenac,"  he  says  of  this  design :  — 

"  When,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  I  formed  the  purpose  of 
writing  a  French-American  history,  I  meant  at  first  to  limit 
myself  to  the  great  contest  which  brought  the  history  to  a 
close.  It  was  by  an  afterthought  that  the  plan  was  extended 


334    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

to  cover  the  whole  field,  so  that  the  part  of  the  work,  or 
series  of  works,  first  conceived  would,  following  the  sequence 
of  events,  be  the  last  executed.  As  soon  as  the  original 
scheme  was  formed,  I  began  to  prepare  for  executing  it  by 
examining  localities,  journeying  in  forests,  visiting  Indian 
tribes,  and  collecting  materials." 

During  his  college  course  Parkman's  health  gave 
way,  and  he  went  abroad ;  but,  keeping  in  mind  his 
purpose,  he  took  lodgings  for  a  time  in  a  Roman 
monastery,  that  he  might  study  the  character  of  the 
religious  recluse  of  whom  the  early  French  mission 
aries  to  the  Indians  were  representatives.  Parkman 
returned  to  Cambridge  in  time  to  be  graduated  with 
his  class  in  1844.  After  his  graduation  he  made  a 
feint  at  studying  law  for  two  years,  then  abandoned 
the  subject  to  throw  himself  heart  and  soul  into  his 
chosen  life-work. 

He  felt  that  a  knowledge  of  Indian  life  and  char 
acter  at  first  hand  was  absolutely  indispensable  to 
his  treatment  of  a  subject  in  which  the  Indian  plays 
so  prominent  a  part ;  and  to  acquire  this  knowledge, 
he  determined  to  spend  some  time  among  the  wild 
tribes  of  the  West.  With  this  purpose  in  view,  he 
set  out  from  St.  Louis  on  the  twenty-eighth  of  April, 
1846,  for  a  tour  to  the  Rocky  Mountains.  The  site 
of  the  present  Kansas  City  was  then  on  the  frontier, 
and  the  vast  plains  of  the  West  were  still  a  free  play 
ground  for  the  buffalo  and  the  Indian.  Parkman 
was  accompanied  by  a  relative  about  his  own  age 
and,  like  himself,  a  college  graduate,  and  by  two 
guides  of  French  descent. 

The  discomforts  of  primitive  travel  over  the  wild 
plains,  drenchings  from  storms,  frantic  chases  after 


Francis  Parkman  335 

galloping  horses  broken  loose,  anxious  camp-fire 
vigils,  rough  and  meagre  fare,  —  all  this  told  on  the 
delicate  constitution  of  Parkman,  and  before  he  had 
reached  the  village  of  the  Dacotah  Indians,  he  was 
so  ill  and  exhausted  that  his  life  was  in  danger.  But 
the  dauntless  spirit  in  him  never  faltered  for  a  mo 
ment.  He  took  up  his  abode  with  an  Indian  family, 
ate  boiled  puppy  with  them  at  their  dog-feasts, 
watched  their  dusky  figures  flitting  before  the  bright 
lodge-fires,  listened  to  their  weird  cries,  and  gave  no 
sign  of  his  suffering.  Of  these  discomforts  and  his 
illness,  he  says :  — 

"  I  was  so  reduced  by  illness  that  I  could  seldom  walk 
without  reeling  like  a  drunken  man,  and  when  I  rose  from 
my  seat  upon  the  ground,  the  landscape  suddenly  grew  dim 
before  my  eyes,  the  trees  and  lodges  seemed  to  sway  to  and 
fro,  and  the  prairie  to  rise  and  fall  like  the  swells  of  the 
ocean.  Such  a  state  of  things  is  not  enviable  anywhere. 
In  a  country  where  a  man's  life  may  at  any  moment  depend 
on  the  strength  of  his  arm,  or  it  may  be  on  the  activity  of 
his  legs,  it  is  more  particularly  inconvenient.  Nor  is  sleep 
ing  on  damp  ground,  with  an  occasional  drenching  from  a 
shower,  very  beneficial  in  such  cases.  I  sometimes  suffered 
the  extremity  of  exhaustion,  and  was  in  a  fair  way  of  aton 
ing  for  my  love  of  the  prairie  by  resting  there  forever. 

"  I  tried  repose  and  a  very  sparing  diet.  For  a  long  time, 
with  exemplary  patience,  I  lounged  about  the  camp,  or  at 
the  utmost  staggered  over  to  the  Indian  village,  and  walked 
faint  and  dizzy  among  the  lodges.  It  would  not  do,  and  I 
bethought  me  of  starvation.  During  five  days  I  sustained 
life  on  one  small  biscuit  a  day.  ...  I  used  to  lie  languid  and 
dreamy  before  our  tent,  musing  on  the  past  and  the  future ; 
and  when  most  overcome  with  lassitude,  my  eyes  turned 
always  toward  the  distant  Black  Hills." 


336    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Mark  that,  —  these  tired,  sick  eyes  turning  not 
toward  rest  and  home,  but  toward  the  purpose  yet 
unfinished.  He  wished  to  see  an  Indian  fight,  prep 
arations  for  which  were  going  on  where  he  was ;  and 
when  the  camp  broke  up,  although  he  was  so  weak 
and  ill  that  he  could  only  sit  his  horse  by  day  "  with 
the  aid  of  a  spoonful  of  whiskey  swallowed  at  short 
intervals,"  he  followed  the  Indian  trail  alone  with 
one  guide. 

On  his  arrival  at  the  Indian  village  he  was  attacked 
by  all  the  curs  in  the  settlement  barking  and  yelling 
at  his  heels.  One  big  white  cur  that  he  could  not 
conciliate  he  bought  of  the  squaw  to  whom  it  be 
longed  for  some  beads,  vermilion,  and  other  trinkets, 
and  had  the  dog  served  up  at  a  feast  to  which  the 
Indians  were  invited.  He  joined  the  Indians  in  a 
buffalo  hunt  to  which  his  savage  companions  rode, 
each  with  a  piece  of  buffalo  robe  for  a  saddle,  and  for  a 
bridle  a  cord  of  twisted  hair  tied  to  the  horse's  lower 
jaw.  He  watched  them  surround  the  newly  killed 
buffalo,  cut  it  to  pieces,  crack  the  huge  bones  and 
devour  the  marrow,  cut  away  collops  of  liver  and  eat 
them  raw  on  the  spot,  their  faces  and  hands  smeared 
with  blood.  He  watched  the  squaws  rub  the  brains 
of  the  buffalo  into  its  hide  to  render  it  soft,  pliant,  and 
fit  for  use  as  clothing  or  the  covering  of  wigwams. 

These  Indians,  the  Western  Dacotahs,  with  whom 
he  lived  were  "  thorough  savages,"  he  tells  us,  "living 
representatives  of  the  stone  age.  .  .  .  Hunting  and  fish 
ing,  they  wander  incessantly,  through  summer  and 
winter.  Some  follow  the  herds  of  buffalo  over  the 
waste  of  prairie;  others  traverse  the  Black  Hills, 
thronging,  on  horseback  and  on  foot,  through  the 


Francis  Parkman  337 

dark  gulfs  and  sombre  gorges,  and  emerging  at  last 
upon  the  '  Parks/  those  beautiful  but  most  perilous 
hunting-grounds.  The  buffalo  supplies  them  with  the 
necessaries  of  life, — with  habitations,  food,  clothing, 
beds,  and  fuel ;  strings  for  their  bows,  glue,  thread, 
cordage,  trail-ropes  for  their  horses,  coverings  for 
their  saddles,  vessels  to  hold  water,  boats  to  cross 
streams,  and  the  means  of  purchasing  all  that  they 
want  from  the  traders.  When  the  buffalo  are  extinct 
they,  too,  must  dwindle  away." 

The  long  painful  summer  with  its  rich  but  costly 
experiences  wore  away,  and  Parkman  returned  to  civ 
ilization  and  the  East  to  prepare  an  account  of  what 
he  had  seen  for  his  first  book,  "  The  Oregon  Trail, 
Sketches  of  Prairie  and  Rocky  Mountain  Life."  He 
had  paid  dear  for  the  material  of  this  book,  but  he 
had  paid  it  willingly.  He  had  witnessed  a  form  of  life 
fast  disappearing,  and  says  of  it :  — 

"  The  wild  cavalcade  that  defiled  with  me  down  the  gorges 
of  the  Black  Hills,  with  its  paint  and  war-plumes,  fluttering 
trophies  and  savage  embroidery,  bows,  arrows,  lances,  and 
shields,  will  never  be  seen  again.  Those  who  formed  it  have 
found  bloody  graves,  or  a  ghastlier  burial  in  the  maws  of 
wolves.  The  Indian  of  to-day,  armed  with  a  revolver  and 
crowned  with  an  old  hat,  is  an  Indian  still,  but  an  Indian 
shorn  of  the  picturesqueness  which  was  his  most  conspicuous 
merit.  The  mountain  trapper  is  no  more,  and  the  grim  ro 
mance  of  his  wild,  hard  life  is  a  memory  of  the  past." 

"The  Oregon  Trail"  appeared  in  1847  m  a  maga 
zine,  and  two  years  later  in  book  form.  It  is  an  ideal 
book  for  the  young  who  love  adventure ;  it  is  truth 
ful,  picturesque,  full  of  the  life  of  the  prairie  and  the 
Indian  lodge.  It  is  intensely  interesting,  also,  to  the 


33  8     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

student  of  Parkman;  being  autobiographical  in  its 
nature,  it  introduces  the  author  in  such  a  way  as  to 
reveal  his  most  prominent  characteristics,  —  heroism, 
endurance,  unwearied  persistence,  and  conscientious 
fidelity  to  fact. 

While  his  memory  of  Indian  life  was  vivid,  Parkman 
wrote  the  "  History  of  the  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,"  and 
published  it  in  1851.  He  said  that  he  chose  the  sub 
ject  because  of  the  opportunities  it  afforded  him  for 
depicting  forest  life  and  the  Indian  character.  The 
book  is  intended  as  a  sequel  to  "  France  and  England 
in  North  America,"  which  is  the  general  title  of  Park- 
man's  historical  works,  and  it  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  of  the  series. 

Parkman  was  happily  married  in  1852;  six  years 
later  his  wife  died,  leaving  him  two  daughters,  and 
his  sister  took  charge  of  his  home  in  Boston.  He 
went  abroad,  spending  his  time  collecting  historical 
material  in  England,  France,  and  Spain.  This  re 
search  was  carried  on  under  very  painful  circum 
stances,  and  in  the  preface  to  his  next  work, 
"  The  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New  World  "  (1865), 
he  informs  his  readers  that  for  eighteen  years  the  state 
of  his  health  has  been  such  as  to  render  close  ap 
plication  to  books  suicidal ;  and  that  for  two  periods 
of  several  years  his  eyes  had  not  permitted  him  to 
read  continuously  for  more  than  five  minutes,  and 
often  not  at  all.  Like  Prescott,  he  was  forced  to  em 
ploy  a  reader  and  to  dictate  what  he  had  composed. 
His  physician  told  him  that  he  could  not  live  and 
work  as  he  did ;  but  the  threat  did  not  make  him 
idle,  he  simply  worked  on. 

In  addition  to  this  labor  of  searching  books   and 


Francis  Parkman  339 

manuscripts  with  borrowed  eyes,  he  added  that  of 
visiting  all  the  chief  localities  mentioned  in  his 
histories.  He  made  in  all  five  journeys  to  Europe 
in  the  interests  of  his  work.  He  travelled  the  ground 
of  the  French  explorers  in  Canada.  He  visited  the 
scenes  of  the  great  battles  and  sieges  in  the  French 
and  Indian  War.  He  journeyed  over  the  country  in 
the  line  of  march  that  the  Spaniard,  Menendez,  took 
on  his  way  to  butcher  the  French  Huguenots  at  Fort 
Caroline,  Florida.  He  explored,  the  scenes  of  La 
Salle's  discoveries.  He  chatted  about  Pontiac  with 
Pierre  Chouteau,  companion  of  La  Clede,  the  founder 
of  St.  Louis,  at  Chouteau's  country-house  near  that 
city.  He  visited  Brittany  that  he  might  look  at  the 
portrait  of  Jacques  Cartier  in  the  town  hall  of  St. 
Malo,  and  his  rude  stone  mansion  in  the  suburbs,  and 
see  for  himself  if  nothing  more  might  be  learned  of 
this  intrepid  explorer. 

He  desired  to  give  life  and  form  to  his  facts  with 
out  abusing  his  fancy.  "  Faithfulness  to  the  truth  of 
history,"  he  says,  "  involves  far  more  than  research, 
however  patient  and  scrupulous,  into  special  facts. 
Such  facts  may  be  detailed  with  the  most  minute 
exactness,  and  yet  the  narrative,  taken  as  a  whole, 
may  be  unmeaning  or  untrue.  The  narrator  must 
seek  to  imbue  himself  with  the  life  and  spirit  of  the 
time.  He  must  study  events  in  their  bearings  near 
and  remote ;  in  the  character,  habits,  and  manners  of 
those  who  took  part  in  them.  He  must  himself  be, 
as  it  were,  a  spectator  of  the  action  he  describes." 

"  The  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New  World  "  was 
succeeded  by  "  The  Jesuits  in  North  America  "  ( 1 867) ; 
"La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the  Great  West" 


34°    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

(1869);  "The  Old  Regime  in  Canada"  (1874); 
"  Count  Frontenac  and  New  France  under  the  Reign 
of  Louis  XIV."  (1877);  "Montcalm  and  Wolfe" 
(1884);  and  "  A  Half  Century  of  Conflict"  (1892). 
The  last-named  volume  is  properly  the  sixth  in  the 
series  concerning  the  struggle  between  France  and 
England  for  possessions  in  the  New  World. 

In  the  execution  of  this  great  work,  Parkman  turned 
once  aside  to  write  a  novel ;  but  the  venture,  like  a 
similar  one  of  Motley's,  was  without  success,  and  he 
did  not  repeat  the  experiment.  As  a  relaxation  from 
his  studies,  he  cultivated  roses  so  successfully  that  his 
gardens  became  famous.  He  was  chosen  president 
of  the  Massachusetts  Horticultural  Society,  and  for 
two  years  was  at  the  head  of  the  agricultural  depart 
ment  in  Harvard  College.  He  was  a  man  of  simple, 
agreeable  manners,  fuller  of  deeds  than  words;  tall 
and  slender  in  figure,  with  a  smooth  face ;  pale,  sharp, 
resolute  features ;  gentle  brown  eyes,  and  thick  hair. 
While  he  lived,  his  active  spirit  knew  no  rest,  and  his 
death  on  the  eighth  of  November,  1893,  followed  close 
upon  the  conclusion  of  his  work. 

The  recognition  of  the  importance  and  significance 
of  that  work  has  been  steadily  growing  since  his 
death.  John  Fiske  declares  that  "  it  clearly  belongs 
among  the  world's  few  masterpieces  of  highest  rank, 
along  with  the  works  of  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  and 
Gibbon."  Parkman  himself  indicates  the  importance 
of  his  theme  when  he  says :  — 

"  The  most  momentous  and  far-reaching  question  ever 
brought  to  issue  on  this  continent  was:  Shall  France  re 
main  here,  or  shall  she  not?  If  by  diplomacy  or  war  she 
had  preserved  but  the  half  or  less  than  half  of  her  American 


Francis  Parkman  341 

possessions,  then  a  barrier  would  have  been  set  to  the  spread 
of  the  English-speaking  races :  there  would  have  been  no 
Revolutionary  War ;  and  for  a  long  time,  at  least,  no  inde 
pendence.  ...  A  happier  calamity  never  befell  a  people 
than  the  conquest  of  Canada  by  the  British  arms." 

He  dwells  with  a  fulness  of  picturesque  detail  on  all 
the  conditions  that  preceded  this  momentous  struggle 
and  conquest;  the  daring  explorations  of  the  French, 
their  efforts  at  colonization ;  the  insufferable  tyrannies 
of  a  paternal  government  that  found  the  citizen  a 
child  and  kept  him  so;  the  thankless  labors  of  the 
Jesuit  missionaries  among  the  Indians,  and  the  life 
and  character  of  the  Indians  themselves.  His  theme 
necessarily  involves  much  repetition  of  scenes  of  car 
nage  and  savage  treachery;  but  he  does  not  write 
history  for  the  sake  of  relating  bloody  conflicts;  it  is 
man  that  interests  him,  —  individual  man,  savage  or 
civilized.  Events  are  little  to  him  unless  they  eluci 
date  character;  while  the  slightest  personal  detail 
that  can  give  a  more  intimate  glimpse  of  a  man's 
nature,  is  of  the  first  importance.  His  pages  are  alive ; 
he  tells  us  how  his  soldiers,  missionaries,  and  ex 
plorers  suffered ;  what  they  said,  and  how  they  felt  and 
looked.  For  this  reason  his  books  abound  in  food 
for  the  psychologist.  Here  the  great  primitive  pas 
sions  of  humanity  have  a  fair  field  for  their  play.  We 
seem  to  be  spectators  of  a  great  moral  drama,  often  a 
terrible  drama.  We  see  the  influence  of  unrestrained 
license  upon  men,  —  the  savage  and  brute  reappear 
ing  as  the  superficial  gloss  of  civilization  wears  away ; 
we  witness  the  strength  of  the  hunger  for  life  in 
mothers  abandoning  their  children  in  moments  of 
deadly  peril,  —  Quakers  abandoning  their  principles 


A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

and  taking  up  arms  in  self-defence.  We  note  the 
vanity  and  selfishness  that  taint  the  ascetic  as  well  as 
the  man  of  the  world ;  we  see  htm  preaching  a  gos 
pel  of  love,  and  at  the  same  time  sowing  the  seeds  of 
hatred  and  murder  in  the  breasts  of  his  converts. 
But  we  note,  too,  fine  heroic  qualities,  for  Parkman 
loves  a  hero.  He  watches  with  Wolfe  racked  with 
pain  and  disease,  and  listens  with  sympathetic  atten 
tion  while  the  hero  says  to  the  physician  before  the 
attack  on  Quebec :  "  I  know  perfectly  well  you  can't 
cure  me,  but  pray  make  me  up  so  that  I  may  be  with 
out  pain  for  a  few  days  and  able  to  do  my  duty :  that 
is  all  I  want."  In  La  Salle  he  finds  another  hero  after 
his  own  heart,  —  a  man  whom  no  peril,  treachery,  or 
difficulty  can  daunt  in  the  fulfilment  of  a  resolve,  — 
"  an  unconquerable  mind  "  served  by  "  a  frame  of 
iron." 

La  Salle  had  first  undertaken  his  Western  explora 
tions  in  hope  of  reaching  the  Indies  through  a  river 
communication  with  the  ocean.  Discovering  that  the 
Mississippi  empties  instead  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
his  next  ambition  was  to  explore  and  colonize  the 
West  for  the  French.  The  boundless,  fertile  prairies 
seemed  to  him  the  possible  foundation  of  a  great 
French  empire.  To  realize  this  possibility,  he  under 
went  almost  incredible  labors,  among  others  that  of 
journeying  on  foot  from  his  newly  built  fort,  Creve- 
cceur,  opposite  the  present  site  of  Peoria,  Illinois, 
to  Montreal,  Canada,  —  setting  out  on  the  first  of 
March,  wading  through  slush  and  snow,  famishing  at 
times  and  arriving  at  his  destination  sixty-five  days 
later,  on  the  sixth  of  May.  Parkman  follows  this 
tedious  and  painful  journey  with  minute  description, 


Francis  Parkman  343 

unwilling  that  the  slightest  detail  of  so  courageous  an 
undertaking  should  miss  its  record. 

Yet  there  is  no  undue  heat  in  Parkman's  enthusi 
asms,  any  more  than  in  his  disapprovals.  He  is 
always  cool  and  unprejudiced.  He  espouses  no 
cause  but  that  of  truth,  and  will  tell  it  whether  it  be  to 
glorification  or  to  shame.  He  has  a  wise  skepticism 
that  will  take  no  character  for  granted  on  the  score 
of  a  reputation,  but  will  sift  all  evidence  pro  and  con 
to  find  out  the  real  man  clear  of  the  false  coloring 
lent  him  by  gratitude  or  prejudice.  He  observes,  in 
"  The  Old  Regime  in  Canada  "  :  — 

"Children  are  taught  that  the  Puritans  came  to  New 
England  in  search  of  religious  liberty.  The  liberty  they 
sought  was  for  themselves  alone.  It  was  the  liberty  to  pre 
vent  all  others  from  doing  the  like.  They  imagined  that 
they  held  a  monopoly  of  religious  truth,  and  were  bound  in 
conscience  to  defend  it  against  all  comers.  Their  mission 
was  to  build  up  a  western  Canaan,  ruled  by  the  law  of  God, 
to  keep  it  pure  from  error,  and,  if  need  were,  purge  it  of 
heresy  by  persecution  ;  to  which  ends  they  set  up  one  of  the 
most  detestable  theocracies  on  record.  Church  and  State 
were  joined  in  one.  Church  members  alone  had  the  right 
to  vote.  There  was  no  choice  but  to  remain  politically  a 
cipher,  or  embrace,  or  pretend  to  embrace,  the  extremest 
dogmas  of  Calvin.  Never  was  such  a  premium  offered  to 
cant  and  hypocrisy;  yet  in  the  early  days  hypocrisy  was 
rare,  so  intense  and  pervading  was  the  faith  of  the  founders 
of  New  England." 

Concerning  the  exile  of  the  Acadians,  he  says:  — 

"New  England  humanitarianism  melting  into  sentimen 
tality  at  a  tale  of  woe  has  been  unjust  to  its  own.  Whatever 
judgment  may  be  passed  on  the  cruel  measure  of  wholesale 


344    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

expatriation,  it  was  not  put  in  execution  till  every  resource  of 
patience  and  persuasion  had  been  tried  in  vain.  The  agents 
of  the  French  Court,  civil  and  military  and  ecclesiastical, 
had  made  some  act  of  force  a  necessity.  We  have  seen 
by  what  vile  practices  they  produced  in  Acadia  a  state  of 
things  intolerable  and  impossible  of  continuance.  They 
conjured  up  the  tempest,  and  when  it  burst  on  the  heads  of 
the  unhappy  people,  they  gave  no  help.  The  government 
of  Louis  XV.  began  with  making  the  Acadians  its  tools,  and 
ended  with  making  them  its  victims." 

As  a  people,  he  does  not  give  an  ideal  picture  of 
them,  but  truthfully  represents  them  as  "  a  simple 
and  very  ignorant  peasantry,  industrious  and  frugal 
till  evil  days  came  to  disconcert  them ;  "  living  in 
wretched  huts,  often  crowded  by  more  than  one  family 
and  not  over  clean,  gossiping  and  quarrelling  among 
themselves,  "sometimes  by  fits,  though  rarely  long, 
contumacious  even  towards  the  cure,  the  guide, 
counsellor,  and  ruler  of  his  flock.  Enfeebled  by 
hereditary  mental  subjection,  and  too  long  kept  in 
leading-strings  to  walk  alone,  they  needed  him,  not 
for  the  next  world  only,  but  for  this ;  and  their  sub 
mission  compounded  of  love  and  fear  was  commonly 
without  bounds.  He  was  their  true  government;  to 
him  they  gave  a  frank  and  full  allegiance,  and  dared 
not  disobey  him  if  they  would.  Of  knowledge  he 
gave  them  nothing ;  but  he  taught  them  to  be  true  to 
their  wives  and  constant  at  confession  and  mass, 
to  stand  fast  for  the  church  and  King  Louis,  and  to 
resist  heresy  and  King  George ;  for,  in  one  degree  or 
another,  the  Acadian  priest  was  always  the  agent 
of  a  double-headed  foreign  power,  —  the  Bishop  of 
Quebec  allied  with  the  Governor  of  Canada." 


Francis  Parkman  345 

While  doing  justice  to  the  devotion,  courage,  and 
resolution  of  the  Jesuits  in  their  missionary  labors  in 
Canada,  Parkman  recognizes  and  declares  that  "  the 
unchecked  sway  of  priests  has  always  been  the  most 
mischievous  of  tyrannies ;  and  even  were  they  all  well- 
meaning  and  sincere,  it  would  be  so  still."  Comment 
ing  upon  the  failure  of  their  missions  among  the 
Canadian  Indians,  with  the  fall  of  the  Hurons,  he 
says :  — 

"  Liberty  may  thank  the  Iroquois  that  by  their  insensate 
fury  the  plans  of  her  adversary  were  brought  to  naught,  and 
a  peril  and  woe  averted  from  her  future.  They  ruined  the 
trade  which  was  the  life-blood  of  New  France ;  they  stopped 
the  current  of  her  arteries,  and  made  all  her  early  years  a 
misery  and  terror.  Not  that  they  changed  her  destinies. 
The  contest  on  this  continent  between  Liberty  and  Absolu 
tism  was  never  doubtful,  but  the  triumph  of  the  one  would 
have  been  dearly  bought,  and  the  downfall  of  the  other  in 
complete.  Populations  formed  in  the  ideas  and  habits  of 
a  monarchy  and  controlled  by  a  hierarchy  profoundly  hostile 
to  freedom  of  thought  would  have  remained  a  hindrance  and 
a  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  that  majestic  experiment  of 
which  America  is  the  field. 

"  The  Jesuits  saw  their  hopes  struck  down,  and  their  faith, 
though  not  shaken,  was  sorely  tried.  The  providence  of 
God  seemed  in  their  eyes  dark  and  inexplicable ;  but  from 
the  standpoint  of  liberty  that  providence  is  clear  as  the 
sun  at  noon.  Meanwhile  let  those  who  have  prevailed  yield 
due  honor  to  the  defeated.  Their  virtues  sfrine  amidst  the 
rubbish  of  error  like  diamonds  and  gold  in  the  gravel  of  the 
torrent." 

A  passionate  lover  of  liberty,  Parkman  can  see 
that  the  full  enjoyment  of  it  does  not  belong  to 
everybody  :  — 


346    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  There  are  no  political  panaceas  except  in  the  imagination 
of  political  quacks.  To  each  degree  and  each  variety  of  pub 
lic  development  there  are  corresponding  institutions,  best 
answering  the  public  needs ;  and  what  is  meat  to  one  is 
poison  to  another.  Freedom  is  for  those  who  are  fit  for  it. 
The  rest  will  lose  it  or  turn  it  to  corruption.  .  .  . 

"  The  German  race,  and  especially  the  Anglo-Saxon  branch 
of  it,  is  particularly  masculine,  and  therefore  particularly  fitted 
for  self-government.  It  submits  its  action  habitually  to  the 
guidance  of  reason,  and  has  the  judicial  faculty  of  seeing  both 
sides  of  a  question.  The  French  Celt  is  cast  in  a  different 
mould.  He  sees  the  end  distinctly,  and  reasons  about  it  with 
admirable  clearness,  but  his  own  impulses  and  passions  con 
tinually  turn  him  away  from  it.  Opposition  excites  him  ;  he 
is  impatient  of  delay,  is  impelled  always  to  extremes,  and 
does  not  readily  sacrifice  a  present  inclination  to  an  ultimate 
good.  He  delights  in  abstractions  and  generalizations,  cuts 
loose  from  unpleasing  facts,  and  runs  through  an  ocean  of 
desires  and  theories." 

Parkman's  work  abounds  in  excellent  characteriza 
tions  like  the  above ;  but  man  does  not  play  the  only 
part  in  it :  nature,  too,  has  her  place  there,  and  he 
paints  the  setting  to  his  great  human  drama  with  as 
much  faithfulness  and  care  as  he  places  his  figures  in 
it.  He  loved  October  and  its  gorgeous  coloring,  call 
ing  autumn  the  most  inspiring  of  American  seasons. 
We  find  its  colors  in  his  books,  but  not  more  fre 
quently  than  the  more  delicate  beauties  of  spring,  the 
snowy  desolation  of  winter,  and  the  fulness  of  summer 
in  primeval  forests.  His  books  are  as  full  of  out 
doors  as  Thoreau's.  It  is  to  the  lakeside,  the  great 
prairies,  or  into  the  depths  of  tangled  forests,  that 
he  leads  us,  and  not  into  kings'  cabinets  and  the 
boudoirs  of  intriguing  women.  The  following  ex- 


Francis  Parkman  347 

ample  of  his  descriptive  power  follows  the  account 
of  the  peril  and  sufferings  endured  by  Champlain 
and  his  companions  during  the  severities  of  a  Cana 
dian  winter : — 

"  This  wintry  purgatory  wore  away ;  the  icy  stalactites  that 
hung  from  the  cliffs  fell  crashing  to  the  earth ;  the  clamor  of 
the  wild  geese  was  heard;  the  bluebird  appeared  in  the 
naked  woods  ;  the  water-willows  were  covered  with  their 
soft  caterpillar-like  blossoms  ;  the  twigs  of  the  swamp  maple 
were  flushed  with  ruddy  bloom  ;  the  ash  hung  out  its  black 
tufts ;  the  shadbush  seemed  a  wreath  of  snow ;  the  white 
stars  of  the  bloodroot  gleamed  among  dank,  fallen  leaves, 
and  in  the  young  grass  of  the  wet  meadows  the  marsh  mari 
golds  shone  like  spots  of  gold." 

But  better  than  anything  else  he  has  done  is  the 
characterization  of  the  Indian.  The  subject  fasci 
nated  him,  and  whether  he  designed  it  or  not,  the 
Indian  is  the  central  figure  of  all  his  work.  He 
paints  him  in  every  mood  and  form  of  his  wild 
life,  —  lounging  on  skins  torpid  after  dog-feasts,  in 
the  excitement  of  war  and  the  chase,  grave  in  the 
council  lodge,  stoical  in  the  endurance  of  torture, 
fiendish  in  the  application  of  it.  He  has  no  illusions 
concerning  him.  "  To  make  the  Indian  a  hero  of 
romance  is  mere  nonsense,"  he  declares.  He  knows 
him  to  be  a  grown-up  child,  lazy,  improvident, 
thoughtless,  credulous,  believing  in  charms,  dreams, 
and  witchcraft,  lying,  thievish,  living  from  hand  to 
mouth,  cruel  as  death  to  his  enemies.  He  does  not 
believe  that  he  can  be  reclaimed  from  a  savage  state, 
but  is  doomed  to  extinction  under  the  efforts  to 
civilize  him. 


348    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  Some  races  of  men  seem  moulded  in  wax,  soft  and  melt 
ing,  at  once  plastic  and  feeble.  Some  races  like  some  metals 
combine  the  greatest  flexibility  with  the  greatest  strength. 
But  the  Indian  is  hewn  out  of  a  rock.  You  can  rarely  change 
the  form  without  destruction  of  the  substance.  Races  of 
inferior  energy  have  possessed  a  power  of  expansion  and  as 
similation  to  which  he  is  a  stranger ;  and  it  is  this  fixed  and 
rigid  rule  that  has  proved  his  ruin.  He  will  not  learn  the  arts 
of  civilization,  and  he  and  his  forest  must  perish  together. 
The  stern,  unchanging  features  of  his  mind  excite  our  ad 
miration  from  their  very  immutability;  and  we  look  with 
deep  interest  on  the  fate  of  this  irreclaimable  child  of  the 
wilderness  who  will  not  be  weaned  from  the  breast  of  his 
rugged  mother." 

Few  histories  leave  upon  the  mind  of  an  American 
reader  so  salutary  an  impression  of  progress  as  Park- 
man's.  Dealing  with  a  period  comparatively  recent, 
they  depict  a  condition  of  things  practically  so  remote 
that  it  is  difficult  to  realize  the  imminence  of  the  dan 
ger  that  threatened  this  country.  Grateful  to  have 
escaped  it,  and  conscious  that  other  insidious  dangers 
confront  us,  the  reader  echoes  the  fine  passage  with 
which  Parkman  closes  his  history  of  "  Montcalm  and 
Wolfe  " :  — 

{t  Those  who  in  the  weakness  of  their  dissensions  needed 
help  from  England  against  the  savage  on  their  borders,  have 
become  a  nation  that  may  defy  every  foe  but  that  most  dan 
gerous  of  all  foes,  herself:  destined  to  a  majestic  future  if 
she  will  shun  the  excess  and  perversion  of  the  principles  that 
made  her  great,  prate  less  about  the  enemies  of  the  present, 
resist  the  mob  and  the  demagogue  as  she  resisted  Parliament 
and  king,  rally  her  powers  from  the  race  for  gold  and  the 
delirium  of  prosperity  to  make  firm  the  foundations  on  which 


Francis  Parkman  349 

that  prosperity  rests,  and  turn  some  fair  proportion  of  her 
vast  mental  forces  to  other  objects  than  material  progress  and 
the  game  of  party  politics.  She  has  tamed  the  savage  con 
tinent,  peopled  the  solitude,  gathered  wealth  untold,  waxed 
potent,  imposing,  redoubtable,  and  now  it  remains  for  her  to 
prove,  if  she  can,  that  the  rule  of  the  masses  is  consistent 
with  the  individual ;  that  democracy  can  give  the  world  a 
civilization  as  mature  and  pregnant,  ideas  as  energetic  and 
vitalizing,  and  types  of  manhood  as  lofty  and  strong,  as  any 
of  the  systems  which  it  boasts  to  supplant." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

LATER  WRITERS — WHITMAN,   STODDARD,  STEDMAN, 
HOWELLS,   JAMES 

IN  our  survey  of  American  Literature  in  the  pre 
ceding  chapters,  we  have  chiefly  confined  our 
attention  to  the  most  eminent  writers  of  our  country, 
—  to  those  whose  work  is  done  and  upon  whom  time 
has  passed  a  favorable  judgment.  But  our  literature 
is  further  enriched  by  other  writers  whose  work  emi 
nently  deserves  recognition.  Among  these  writers 
the  most  distinguished  are  the  novelists  Henry  James 
and  William  Dean  Howells ;  the  poets  and  critics  Ed 
mund  Clarence  Stedman  and  Henry  Stoddard;  the 
sincere,  manly  essayist  John  Burroughs ;  the  philos 
opher  and  historian  John  Fiske;  and  the  popular 
humorist  Mark  Twain  (Samuel  Langhorne  Clemens). 
We  have  also  in  Walt  Whitman  another  writer  of 
peculiar  interest,  but  one  who  holds  an  anomalous 
and  equivocal  position  in  American  literature. 
Though  unrecognized  by  the  vast  majority  of  thought 
ful  readers  and  conscientious  critics,  he  is  not  lacking 
in  a  unique  and  interesting  personality,  and  is  not 
without  a  small  band  of  enthusiastic  admirers  whose 
opinions  deserve  serious  consideration  and  not  the 
contemptuous  silence  with  which  they  are  usually 
received. 


Later  Writers  351 

When  Whitman's  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  appeared  in 
1855,  Emerson  wrote  the  author  a  letter,  breathing 
the  very  spirit  of  generous,  enthusiastic  approval  and 
encouragement.  Whitman's  unconventionality,  his 
immense  egotism  answering  to  that  self-reliance  and 
independence  that  Emerson  himself  inculcates,  un 
doubtedly  pleased  him.  Here  seemed  the  man 
self-centred,  erect,  broad  as  the  prairies  of  his  country, 
of  whom  Emerson  had  written ;  and  he  hailed  the  new 
man  as  a  prophet  hails  what  answers  to  his  word. 
His  enthusiasm  blinded  his  judgment;  he  wished  so 
earnestly  to  see  some  living  thing  in  the  wilderness 
that  he  mistook  a  bush  for  a  bear.  But  his  enthu 
siasm  cooled  ;  he  saw  his  mistake,  and  to  the  generous, 
unstinted  praise  of  the  letter  to  the  author  there  suc 
ceeded  a  sober  second  judgment  which  made  him  regret 
sincerely  Whitman's  unauthorized  publication  of  it. 

Thoreau,  too,  records  his  admiration  of  Whitman's 
"  Leaves  of  Grass/'  not  so  unreservedly  as  Emerson, 
but  as  heartily,  saying :  "  I  do  not  believe  that  all  the 
sermons  that  have  been  preached  in  the  land  put 
together  are  equal  to  it,  for  preaching."  This  dictum 
is  repeated  in  various  forms  by  a  few  other  distin 
guished  Americans,  notably,  John  Burroughs  and 
Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  and  finds  an  echo  in 
England  among  a  small  number  of  liberal  thinkers. 
Therefore  no  student  of  American  letters  can  be 
excused  from  examining  the  claims  of  Walt  Whitman 
as  a  poet  and  thinker. 

WALT  WHITMAN  was  born  on  the  thirty-first  of 
May,  1819,  at  West  Hills,  Long  Island,  about  thirty 
miles  from  New  York  City.  On  the  paternal  side  he 


352    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

was  of  Anglo-American  descent,  but  his  mother, 
Louisa  Van  Velsor,  was  of  Dutch  origin.  "  The  Van 
Velsors,"  says  Whitman,  "  were  noted  for  fine  horses, 
which  the  men  bred  and  trained  from  blooded  stock." 
Burroughs  speaks  of  a  paternal  great-grandmother, 
"  a  large,  swarthy  woman  who  lived  to  a  very  old  age. 
She  smoked  tobacco,  rode  on  horseback  like  a  man, 
managed  the  most  vicious  horse,  and  becoming  a 
widow  in  later  years,  went  forth  every  day  over  her 
farmlands  frequently  in  the  saddle,  directing  the  labor 
of  her  slaves,  with  language  in  which,  on  exciting 
occasions,  oaths  were  not  spared." 

Whitman  inherited  from  this  coarse  and  vigorous 
stock  his  healthy  physique  and  love  of  the  open  air. 
He  was  thoroughly  an  out-door  boy ;  clam-digging, 
eel-spearing,  gathering  sea-gulls'  eggs,  fishing  ex 
cursions,  chats  with  fishermen  and  sailors  were  the 
chief  pleasures  of  his  boyhood.  Coney  Island,  then 
bare  and  unfrequented,  was  his  favorite  bathing-place, 
and  when  a  lad  in  his  teens,  he  loved  to  race  naked 
up  and  down  the  hard  sand,  declaiming  aloud  Homer 
and  Shakespeare.  His  father,  a  carpenter  and  builder, 
had  a  family  of  eight  children,  of  whom  Walt  was  the 
second  son.  The  eldest  son  was  mentally  defective, 
and  died  insane  a  little  past  middle  life;  and  the 
youngest,  Eddy,  was  an  imbecile.  A  third  son  was 
a  poor  weak  creature  who  died  in  middle  age,  but 
Walt  was  a  healthy,  fast-growing  lad,  and  at  fifteen 
had  almost  the  stature  of  a  man.  When  his  father 
removed  with  his  family  to  Brooklyn,  Walt  became 
for  a  short  time  a  lawyer's  office-boy.  A  ticket  to  a 
circulating  library  was  given  him,  and  he  devoured 
romances,  novels,  and  poetry  without  discrimination. 


Later  Writers 

He  had  no  settled  aim  for  the  future  beyond  what  is 
understood  by  the  phrase  "  seeing  life."  He  was  a 
lover  of  crowds,  had  a  particular  fondness  for  ferries, 
and  his  favorite  comrades  were  omnibus-drivers.  He 
told  Thoreau  that  he  "  loved  to  ride  up  and  down 
Broadway  all  day  on  an  omnibus,  sitting  beside  the 
driver,  gesticulating  and  declaiming  at  the  top  of  his 
voice."  He  acknowledges  his  indebtedness  to  these 
Broadway  jaunts  as  well  as  to  the  stage  actors,  singers, 
and  public  speakers  of  his  time,  for  the  inspiration  of 
much  of  his  "  Leaves  of  Grass."  The  truth  is,  he  had 
a  prosaic  and  not  a  poetical  order  of  mind.  His 
imagination  was  too  meagre  to  afford  him  pleasure 
or  to  lead  him  to  knowledge,  and  he  was  wholly  in 
debted  to  sensory  impressions  for  his  intellectual 
development.  Hence  the  eagerness  with  which  he 
sought  such  impressions,  and  the  importance  he 
ascribes  to  them. 

On  leaving  the  law  office,  Whitman  learned  print 
ing,  taught  country  schools  and  boarded  round,  re 
sumed  his  trade,  edited,  a  paper  in  Brooklyn  for  a 
year,  worked  his  way  as  a  journeyman  printer  through 
many  of  the  States,  tried  house-building  for  a  time, 
and  having  reached  middle  life  without  success  in 
anything,  resolved  to  become  a  great  poet  of  a  new 
order,  a  new  time,  and  a  new  country. 

He  tells  us  that  before  writing  he  went  thoroughly 
through  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  Shakespeare* 
Ossian,  the  best  translated  versions  of  Dante,  Homer, 
^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  the  Nibelungenlied,  and  one  or 
two  other  masterpieces,  and  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  these  giants  had  served  their  purpose  with  the 
past  but  were  unfit  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  the 

23 


354    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

future.  Democracy  and  America  had  come  into 
existence  since  then,  and  must  be  sung  in  his  own 
personality,  —  he,  Walt  Whitman,  being  their  repre 
sentative.  Then  he  looked  over  Poe's  poems,  which 
he  did  not  admire,  but  in  his  prose  works  he  found 
the  theory  that  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  a  long 
poem.  The  idea  made  a  strong  impression  upon  him, 
and  induced  him  to  chop  his  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  into 
fragments;  there  is  absolutely  no  other  reason  for 
such  divisions  as  he  makes,  since  theme  and  style  are 
identical  from  beginning  to  end  of  his  work,  and  he  can 
give  to  his  segments  no  other  title  than  their  first  line. 

"Leaves  of  Grass"  appeared  in  1855.  The  pub 
lication  of  Emerson's  private  letter  to  Whitman 
attracted  the  first  general  attention  to  the  book,  but 
it  met  with  almost  universal  condemnation. 

The  Civil  War  broke  out;  in  1862  news  came  to 
Whitman  that  his  brother  George  had  been  wounded 
in  the  battle  of  Fredericksburg,  and  he  went  to  the 
camp  hospital  at  Falmouth,  Virginia,  to  take  care  of 
him.  The  sufferings  that  he  witnessed  among  the 
wounded  and  dying  soldiers  touched  his  large  warm 
heart,  and  he  continued  his  ministrations  among  them 
at  different  camps  until  the  close  of  the  war.  Very 
beautiful,  very  manly,  noble,  and  tender,  was  this  camp 
duty ;  and  the  memory  of  it  should  not  perish.  He 
wrote  letters  for  the  wounded;  cheered  them  with 
hearty  words  of  sympathy  and  hope ;  carried  them 
gifts  of  books,  magazines,  newspapers,  tobacco,  fruits, 
or  dainties,  as  he  thought  fitting,  —  often  small  sums 
of  money  which  he  received  for  that  purpose  from 
benevolent  men  and  women.  On  a  hot,  broiling  July 
day  he  would  give  them  an  ice-cream  treat.  He 


Later  Writers 

slighted  none,  Northern  or  Southern,  white  or 'black, 
and  met,  as  he  calculates,  from  eighty  to  one  hundred 
thousand  soldiers.  He  helped  to  dress  their  wounds, 
kissed  them  tenderly  as  a  mother  when  the  longing 
for  home  was  strong  in  them.  But  the  richest  gift  of 
all  that  he  brought  them  was  the  gift  of  himself;  the 
sunny  wholesomeness  and  courage  of  his  presence 
Health,  strength,  and  cleanness  seemed  to  radiate 
from  him;  he  had  a  magnificent  physique, —  tall, 
large-limbed,  broad-shouldered,  and  his  bright  florid 
complexion  was  heightened  in  color  by  contrast  with 
his  hair  and  beard,  which  whitened  early.  His  man 
ner  was  calm  and  self-possessed;  he  was  rarely  or 
never  excited ;  was  not  fluent  in  conversation,  often 
hesitating  for  the  right  word  and  the  idea,  but  he  was 
a  good  listener. 

After  the  war  Whitman  found  employment  in  the 
Indian  Bureau  of  the  Interior  Department  at  Wash 
ington.  An  ex-Methodist  clergyman,  then  secretary 
of  the  Interior,  turned  him  out  for  having  written 
"  Leaves  of  Grass."  This  unjust  and  pitifully  childish 
behavior  toward  a  man  who  had  rendered  valuable 
services  to  his  country  during  the  war,  and  who  was 
still  serving  her  as  a  faithful  and  competent  official, 
secured  for  Whitman  the  stanch  friendship  and 
esteem  of  many  worthy  men  and  women.  From 
Washington  he  went  to  his  brother  George's  home  at 
Camden,  New  Jersey.  The  terrible  strain  of  three 
years'  hospital  service  had  sapped  his  splendid 
strength,  and  in  February,  1873,  he  was  stricken  with 
paralysis.  When  he  had  sufficiently  recovered  to  be 
about  again,  he  spent  his  summers  at  a  country  farm 
house  near  Timber  Creek. 


356    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

There  was  a  fine  strain  of  heroism  in  the  man,  which 
showed  itself  in  his  hospital  experiences,  and  now 
showed  itself  again  in  the  resolute  bravery  with  which 
he  bore  his  sad  affliction.  He  did  not  whimper,  he 
did  not  dwell  upon  what  he  had  been  or  might  be, 
but  made  the  most  of  the  sources  of  happiness  still 
accessible.  "  The  trick  is,  I  find,"  he  says,  "  to  tone 
your  wants  and  tastes  low  down  enough,  and  make 
much  of  negatives  and  of  mere  daylight  and  the 
skies."  He  lived  as  much  as  possible  out  of  doors, 
making  a  gymnasium  of  the  quiet  woods,  taking  naked 
sun  baths  and  brisk  rubbings,  exercising  arms  and 
chest  by  pulling  on  the  tough  flexible  young  boughs 
of  beech,  hickory,  or  holly,  and  swaying  and  yielding 
with  them,  exercising  his  lungs  by  shouting,  singing, 
declaiming,  as  in  the  old  Broadway  days,  living,  in 
short,  as  he  says,  — 

"  At  vacancy  with  nature, 
Acceptive  and  at  ease  : 
Distilling  the  present  hour, 
Whatever,  wherever  it  is, 
And  over  the  past,  oblivion." 

In  these  little  excursions  he  carried  a  note-book, 
and  found  the  woods  in  mid  May  and  early  June  his 
best  places  of  composition.  He  believed  that,  after  all 
that  is  temporary  in  life,  nature  alone  remains  perma 
nent  to  man,  and  that  the  ultimate  serenity  and  hap 
piness  of  mankind  depends  upon  awakening  "  from 
their  torpid  recesses  the  affinities  of  a  man  or  a 
woman  with  the  open  air,  the  trees,  fields,  changes  of 
seasons,  the  sun  by  day  and  the  stars  of  heaven  by 
night." 


Later  Writers  357 

The  prose  volume,  "  Specimen  Days/'  resulting 
from  the  notes  taken  in  these  summer  excursions,  is 
filled  with  descriptions  of  brooks,  clouds,  trees,  the 
flight  of  birds,  the  humming  of  insects,  given  in  a 
succession  of  minute  details,  as  is  his  method  in  what 
he  calls  his  poetry,  and  like  it  wholly  wanting  in  that 
picture-making  power  of  selection  that  marks  the  true 
artist,  and  almost  wholly  wanting  in  that  vivifying 
presence  of  the  imagination  which  marks  the  true 
poet.  Yet  Whitman  never  makes  nature  an  accom 
plice  of  human  frailty,  and  the  book  is  singularly  free 
from  any  weak  sentimentalizing. 

Whitman  never  recovered  his  old  vigor,  and  in 
1888  he  had  so  far  declined  in  health  as  to  require  a 
wheeled  chair  and  an  attendant.  He  had  been  living 
for  some  time  at  his  own  plain  little  house  on  Mickle 
Street,  Camden,  New  Jersey,  where  he  received  visits 
from  many  friends  and  admirers.  All  who  met  him 
found  him  the  most  cheerful  of  invalids,  and  testify  to 
the  singular  charm  of  his  personality.  He  was  no 
student  of  books,  but  impatient  of  methods  of  learn 
ing  that  were  not  directly  aimed  at  eye  and  ear.  For 
that  reason  he  liked  best  of  all  to  associate  with 
unlearned  men  and  women  of  native  vigor  of  mind. 
He  had  a  strong,  rugged,  self-reliant,  all-embracing 
nature,  fearing  nothing  but  "  grace,  elegance,  civiliza 
tion,  the  mellow-sweet,  the  sucking  of  honey-juice," 
and  as  a  man  he  was  altogether  lovable,  and  in  many 
respects  admirable.  But  he  was  neither  a  profound 
and  logical  thinker,  nor  a  poet,  and  he  laid  claim  to 
these  distinctions. 

Whitman  died  on  the  twenty-sixth  of  March,  1892. 
His  prose  works  are   published    under  the  titles  of 


358     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  Specimen  Days  and  Collect "  and  "  November 
Boughs."  What  is  called  his  poetry  is  published  in 
a  volume  entitled  "  Leaves  of  Grass,"  to  which  many 
lines,  some  of  them  under  the  general  title  of  "  Drum 
Taps,"  have  been  added  since  the  first  edition. 

In  justice  to  those  who  cannot  transform  defects 
into  charms,  it  is  necessary  to  state  that  even  Whit 
man's  most  ardent  admirers  have  not  arrived  at  a 
stage  of  uncritical  enthusiasm  without  severe  and  con 
tinuous  effort.  One  of  them  confesses  that  for 
eighteen  years  he  has  read  Whitman,  does  not  under 
stand  him  yet,  never  expects  to  do  so  wholly,  finds 
him  "  lighted  with  an  almost  unearthly  splendor," 
and  will  continue  to  read  him  as  long  as  he  lives. 
Experience  teaches  us  that  there  is  no  superstition  so 
ugly,  so  foul,  or  so  absurd,  that  it  cannot  find  a  fol 
lowing,  if  it  be  only  asserted  with  sufficient  gravity 
and  vehemence  for  a  certain  length  of  time.  There 
is  no  deformity  of  fashion,  no  native  ugliness  that 
having  been  looked  at  long  enough  will  not  eventu 
ally  please  the  eye.  In  certain  Alpine  districts  where 
goitre  universally  prevails,  if  a  comely  girl  chances  to 
escape  this  hideous  affliction,  it  is  said  compassion 
ately  of  her,  "  How  pretty  she  would  be,  if  she  only 
had  a  goitre !  "  Fortunately  for  the  reign  of  good 
taste  in  art  and  literature,  the  goitrous  poet  the  "  un 
earthly  splendor  "  of  whose  affliction  it  requires  eigh 
teen  years'  steady  reading  to  discover,  will  never  be 
luminous  to  many  readers. 

Whitman's  admirers  are  to  be  found,  not  among 
those  for  whom  he  professed  to  write  and  whose 
representative  he  called  himself,  but  among  those  in 
whom  an  excess  of  culture  has  resulted  in  a  revolt 


Later  Writers 


359 


against  good  taste.  Commenting  upon  this  fact  in 
his  admirable  lecture  on  "  The  English  Novel," 
Sidney  Lanier  says  of  Whitman :  — 

"  Professing  to  be  a  mudsill  and  glorying  in  it,  chanting 
democracy  and  shirt-sleeves  and  equal  rights,  declaring  he  is 
nothing  if  not  one  of  the  people,  nevertheless  the  people,  the 
democracy,  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  him,  and  it  is  safe  to 
say  that  his  sole  audience  has  lain  among  such  represen 
tatives  of  the  highest  culture  as  Emerson  and  the  English 
illuminated. 

"  The  truth  is  that,  if  closely  examined,  Whitman  instead 
of  being  a  true  democrat  is  simply  the  most  incorrigible  of 
aristocrats  masquing  in  a  peasant's  costume,  and  his  poetry, 
instead  of  being  the  natural  outcome  of  a  fresh  young  de 
mocracy  is  a  product  which  would  be  impossible  except  in 
a  highly  civilized  society.  .  .  .  His  democracy  is  really  the 
worst  kind  of  aristocracy,  being  an  aristocracy  of  nature's 
favorites  in  the  matter  of  muscle.  .  .  . 

"  In  speaking  to  those  who  may  be  poets  in  the  future,  I 
cannot  close  these  hasty  words  upon  the  Whitman  school 
without  a  fervent  protest  in  the  name  of  all  art  and  artists 
against  a  poetry  which  has  painted  a  great  scrawling  picture 
of  the  human  body,  and  has  written  under  it  '  This  is  the 
soul; '  which  shouts  a  profession  of  religion  in  every  line,  but 
of  a  religion  that  when  examined  reveals  no  tenet,  no  rubric 
save  that  a  man  must  be  natural,  must  abandon  himself  to 
every  passion ;  and  which  constantly  roars  its  belief  in  God, 
but  with  a  camerado  air,  as  if  it  were  patting  the  Deity  on 
the  back  and  bidding  Him  Cheer  up  and  hope  for  further 
encouragement. " 

Every  honest,  unprejudiced  critic  must  echo 
Lanier's  protest.  Whitman  himself  declared  to  a 
group  of  friends  that  one  main  object  he  had  from 
the  first  was  to  sing,  and  sing  to  the  full,  the  ecstasy  of 


360    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

simple  physiological  being.  This  putting  of  one's 
self  on  record,  not  by  his  best  thoughts,  his  aim,  his 
aspirations,  but  by  his  weight,  the  girth  of  his  thigh 
or  chest,  and  the  state  of  his  lungs  and  liver,  is  unique 
enough,  and  may  be  interesting  from  an  anatomical 
point  of  view ;  but  it  is  not  with  a  man's  liver  and 
lungs  that  literature  is  concerned.  Neither  is  it  con 
cerned  with  political  and  material  success,  nor  have 
we  Americans,  by  virtue  of  living  in  a  large,  fertile, 
and  prosperous  country  under  a  democratic  form  of 
government,  lost  the  instincts  and  desires  common  to 
humanity,  lost  all  pleasure  in  noble,  uplifting  thoughts, 
all  capacity  for  appreciating  what  is  refined  and 
beautiful  in  art  and  literature,  and  therefore  must 
produce  a  new  form  of  poetry  to  tell  the  world  how 
well  off  we  are  in  cattle  and  corn. 

Whitman's  method  of  writing  "  poetry "  is  very 
simple.  His  impatience  of  restraint,  his  incapacity 
for  close  attention,  and  his  defective  ear  made  rhyme 
utterly  impossible  to  him,  and  he  ignored  it  entirely, 
but  substituted,  instead,  the  mere  form  of  it,  —  short 
lines  and  capital  letters.  Sometimes  these  lines  have 
a  certain  rude  vigor  and  rhythmic  swing  decidedly 
fresh  and  pleasing.  "  The  Song  of  the  Redwood 
Tree,"  for  example,  has  melody,  freshness,  verve,  and 
a  wholesome  sentiment.  The  last  eight  lines  of  "  A 
Song  for  Occupations  "  are  good  and  vigorous.  The 
lines  in  "  Drum  Taps  "  entitled  "  Come  up  from  the 
Fields,  Father,"  contain  a  vivid  and  touching  home 
scene  when  news  of  battle  is  brought  to  the  old  farm 
house  ;  and  the  poem  on  Lincoln's  death,  "  Captain, 
O,  my  Captain,"  has  been  much  and  deservedly 
admired.  But  for  the  most  part  Whitman's  lines 


Later  Writers  361 

are  the  veriest  dry  bones  of  prose,  growing  out  of  a 
note-book,  a  pencil,  and  a  dictionary  of  technical 
terms. 

No  man  ever  pierced  the  surface  of  things  so  little 
as  Whitman.  He  can  do  nothing  but  heap  epithet 
upon  epithet,  call  names  and  append  an  exclamation 
point  to  them  or  print  them  in  italics  ;  as  if  one  were 
to  call  out  stentoriously  "  rose,  nightingale,  forest,'* 
and  believe  that  with  this  shouting  of  names  he  had 
caught  color,  perfume,  melody,  and  majesty,  and 
fixed  them  in  immortal  verse.  Whitman's  dreary 
cataloguing  is  as  far  from  the  method  of  the  imagina 
tion  as  the  rule  of  three  from  a  Shakespearian  sonnet. 
Amidst  a  confusing  mass  of  details,  the  truly  imagina 
tive  or  artistic  mind  seizes  upon  the  characteristic 
and  suggestive  features  of  a  subject  and  reproduces 
them  vividly.  Tha  true  poet  discriminates  between 
what  is  essential  to  his  theme  and  what  is  not.  The 
world  will  not  soon  forget  that  storm  in  the  Alps 
which  Byron  sung  in  a  few  short  vigorous  lines :  — 

"  Far  along, 

From  peak  to  peak  the  rattling  crags  among, 
Leaps  the  live  thunder !  not  from  one  lone  cloud, 
But  every  mountain  now  hath  found  a  tongue, 
And  Jura  answers  through  her  misty  shroud 
Back  to  the  joyous  Alps,  who  call  to  her  aloud." 

What  movement,  what  crashing  sound  and  exhilar 
ating  joy,  are  crowded  into  these  few  lines  !  The  tell 
ing  points  of  the  storm  are  seized, — the  ragged 
lightning-flash,  the  startling  peal,  and  its  rolling 
echoes.  The  attention  is  concentrated  on  these,  and 
is  not  weakened  by  crowding  in  details  of  which  the 
spectator  would  be  unconscious. 


362    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

Whitman,  on  the  contrary,  in  his  "  Proud  Music  of 
the  Storm,"  drivels  through  six  or  seven  pages  about 
all  the  noises  he  ever  heard,  until  the  confused  and 
wearied  reader  loses  all  grasp  of  his  theme,  and  is 
reminded  of  the  babbling  old  nurse  in  "  Romeo  and 
Juliet "  who  must  recall  the  chief  events  of  fourteen 
years  to  say  that  Juliet  is  near  that  age.  No  con 
tinuity,  no  clear  settled  purpose,  distinguishes  Whit 
man's  dull,  uncouth  pages  of  words.  He  once  told  a 
friend  that  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  is  "  just  four  hundred 
pages  of  '  let  fly,'  "  and  so  it  is.  Geographical  cata 
logues  make  up  a  good  part  of  it,  and  they  continue 
for  page  after  page  in  a  dry  enumeration  unrelieved 
by  a  single  reflection  to  show  why  they  were  copied 
from  some  school-boy's  text-book. 

When  Whitman  drops  his  inventory  style,  he 
frequently  falls  into  the  coarsest  slang  and  most 
vulgar  grammatical  errors,  or  utters  commonplaces 
in  a  strained,  affected,  uncouth  garb  singularly  out  of 
harmony  with  the  democratic  simplicity  that  he  so 
constantly  lauds.  He  plays  all  sorts  of  jugglery  with 
language;  throws  words  together  in  an  incoherent 
jumble  without  subject  or  predicate;  couples  the 
most  opposite  terms  and  ideas  in  bold  defiance  of 
the  laws  of  reason;  and  affects  mutilated  foreign 
words,  trusting  to  the  ignorance  of  his  readers  to 
give  him  credit  for  familiarity  with  various  tongues. 
He  has  no  definite  expression  for  his  thought,  or 
rather  no  definite  thought  for  expression;  but  ranges 
synonym  after  synonym  in  line,  so  that  his  ideas,  in 
stead  of  having  a  solid  centre  and  firm  outline,  are 
enveloped  in  a  nebulous  cloud  and  fray  out  into  the 
feeblest  mist. 


Later  Writers  363 

No  man  ever  made  so  many  promises  and  failed 
to  keep  them  as  Whitman.  His  "  Leaves  of  Grass" 
is  mainly  made  up  of  assertions  that  he  is  going  to 
sing  the  song  of  this  or  that,  that  he  is  going  to  be 
the  founder  of  a  new  religion,  etc.,  but  he  never  goes 
beyond  the  promise.  He  is  the  stentorian-voiced 
showman  of  a  little  side-show,  where  more  is  to  be 
seen  on  the  posters  and  heard  in  the  braggadocio  of 
the  showman's  tongue  than  inside  the  tent.  He  is 
like  a  little  second-hand  country  shop  that  calls  itself 
the  "  World's  Bargain  Store  "  and  has  the  earth  for 
its  sign.  Nothing  is  more  absurd  than  the  claim 
of  some  of  his  admirers  that  he  "  has  dealt  with 
the  vast  developments  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
all  the  teeming  life  and  work  of  America,"  simply 
because  he  has  crowded  into  his  catalogues  all  the 
nouns  and  adjectives  he  ever  heard  of.  Any  un 
abridged  dictionary  would  be  a  more  fitting  subject  of 
such  eulogy  than  Whitman.  As  well  might  an  artist 
lay  claim  to  having  painted  a  picture  because  he  had 
said  "  trees,  water,  earth,  sky,  blue,  green,  red,  brown ;  " 
or  a  builder  declare  that  he  had  put  up  a  house  be 
cause  he  had  collected  the  bricks  for  one.  The 
truth  is,  Whitman  has  dealt  with  nothing,  and  our 
proud  civilization  would  sink  into  a  chaos  of  anarchy 
were  his  teachings  to  be  universally  followed.  Noth 
ing  that  stimulates  his  slow  pulse  is  repugnant  to 
him ;  hence  he  falls  into  indecencies  in  which  there 
is  neither  salt  of  wit,  sarcastic  lash,  nor  gleam  of 
intellect  to  preserve  them  from  putridity.  He  knows 
no  distinction  between  good  and  evil,  beauty  and  ugli 
ness,  or  what  is  pleasant  to  the  senses  and  what  is 
disgusting.  To  what  little  purpose  he  studied  nature 


364    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

not  to  learn  that  law,  not  license,  governs  all  her 
works;  that  instead  of  the  blind  impartiality  he 
attributes  to  her  and  would  imitate,  she  is  an  inexor 
able  discriminator !  In  her  fierce  struggle  for  the 
survival  of  the  fittest,  she  takes  by  the  hand  the 
strongest ;  she  pardons  no  lapse  into  weakness ;  she 
sends  disease  and  death  on  the  trail  of  broken  law ; 
she  aims  at  growth  and  development,  and  in  steady 
pursuit  of  that  aim  has  ruthlessly  blotted  out  type 
after  type  that  has  failed  to  meet  the  demands  of 
environment. 

In  the  presence  of  this  solemn  teaching,  Whitman's 
"  profound  lesson  of  reception,  nor  preference,  nor 
denial,"  that  ranks  the  beetle  and  his  dung-ball  with 
Christ  and  Socrates,  the  murderer  and  the  felon  with 
saint  and  sage,  but  typifies  the  ignorant  indiscrimina 
tion  of  the  drivelling  child  that  fills  his  mouth  with 
dirt  and  buttons,  candy  or  apples,  as  they  happen  to 
come  within  reach  of  his  feeble,  restless  hands.  An 
acceptation  of  Whitman's  teaching  is  a  denial  of 
nature's  lessons ;  it  is  a  step  backward :  and  as  long 
as  there  is  in  human  nature  an  instinct  that  impels 
it  forward,  a  love  of  decency  and  order,  a  cheerful 
obedience  to  law  in  the  knowledge  that  it  is  the 
foundation  of  all  free,  healthy  life,  a  clear  discrimi 
nation  between  what  tends  to  human  welfare  and 
what  tends  to  human  destruction,  a  refined  appre 
ciation  for  the  graces  as  well  as  the  substance  of  art, 
—  there  will  be  no  place  for  Walt  Whitman  among 
the  great  thinkers  and  poets  of  the  world. 

RICHARD  HENRY  STODDARD  was  born  in  the  sea- 
coast  town  of  Hingham,  Massachusetts,  July  2,  1825. 


Later  Writers  365 

His  father,  a  sea-captain,  died  in  the  poet's  early 
boyhood.  His  mother  married  again,  and  removed 
with  her  family  to  New  York,  where  the  boy  worked 
for  a  time  in  an  iron  foundry.  We  do  not  know  the 
story  of  the  struggle  of  this  susceptible  and  poetical 
nature  to  grow  to  its  full  stature  in  the  midst  of  cir 
cumstances  so  adverse,  —  the  hard  toil  that  exacts 
its  full  share  of  mental  as  well  as  physical  strength, 
the  uncongenial  atmosphere  of  a  crowded  and  noisy 
city,  —  but  that  it  did  grow  we  have  abundant  evi 
dence  in  prose  and  verse. 

"The  Country  Life,"  a  beautiful  little  poem, 
gives  us  a  glimpse  of  the  poet's  tastes  and  dearest 
recollections :  — 


"  Not  what  we  would,  but  what  we  must, 

Makes  up  the  sum  of  living. 
Heaven  is  both  more  and  less  than  just 

In  taking  and  in  giving. 

Swords  cleave  to  hands  that  sought  the  plough, 
And  laurels  miss  the  soldier's  brow. 

"  Me  whom  the  city  holds,  whose  feet 

Have  worn  its  stony  highways, 
Familiar  with  its  loneliest  street, 

Its  ways  were  never  my  ways. 
My  cradle  was  beside  the  sea, 
And  there  I  hope  my  grave  will  be. 

"  Old  homestead  !     In  that  gray  old  town 

Thy  vane  is  seaward  blowing ; 
The  slip  of  garden  stretches  down 

To  where  the  tide  is  flowing. 
Below  they  lie,  their  sails  all  furled, 
The  ships  that  go  about  the  world. 


366    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  Dearer  that  little  country  house 

Inland,  with  pines  beside  it, 
Some  peach-trees  with  unfruitful  boughs, 

A  well  with  weeds  to  hide  it, 
No  flowers,  or  only  such  as  rise 
Self-sown,  poor  things,  which  all  despise. 

"  Dear  country  home,  can  I  forget 

The  least  of  thy  sweet  trifles,  — 
The  window-vines  that  clamber  yet, 

Whose  bloom  the  bee  still  rifles  ! 
The  roadside  blackberries  growing  ripe 
And  in  the  woods  the  Indian  Pipe." 

The  intoxicating  and  satisfying  sense  of  beauty  in 
the  world  is  very  prettily  expressed  in  the  poems 
"Spring"  and  "Hymn  to  the  Beautiful."  The 
opening  stanza  of  the  latter  poem  is  particularly 
good : — 

"  My  heart  is  full  of  tenderness  and  tears, 
And  tears  are  in  my  eyes,  I  know  not  why, 
With  all  my  grief  content  to  live  for  years, 
Or  even  this  hour  to  die. 
My  youth  is  gone,  but  that  I  heed  not  now, 
My  love  is  dead,  or  worse  than  dead  can  be, 
My  friends  drop  off  like  blossoms  from  a  bough, 
But  nothing  troubles  me,  — 
Only  the  golden  flush  of  sunset  lies 
Within  my  heart  like  fire,  like  dew  within  my  eyes." 

"  The  Flight  of  Youth,"  another  happy  rendering 
of  a  universal  feeling,  runs  as  follows  :  — 

"  There  are  gains  for  all  our  losses, 

There  are  balms  for  all  our  pain, 
But  when  youth  the  dream  departs, 
It  takes  something  from  our  hearts, 
And  it  never  comes  again. 


Later  Writers  367 

"  We  are  stronger,  and  are  better 

Under  manhood's  sterner  reign, 
Still  we  feel  that  something  sweet 
Followed  youth  with  flying  feet, 

And  will  never  come  again. 

"  Something  beautiful  is  vanished, 

And  we  sigh  for  it  in  vain ; 
We  behold  it  everywhere 
On  the  earth  and  in  the  air, 
But  it  never  comes  again." 

The  poems  we  have  noticed  belong  to  Stoddard's 
less  ambitious  efforts ;  but  they  are  the  lines  that 
have  the  staying  quality,  —  the  lines  that  touch  some 
familiar  and  responsive  chords  in  us,  and  are  remem 
bered  longest.  We  find  fewer  of  such  lines  in  the 
poetry  of  Stedman,  who  in  his  early  years  was  too 
powerfully  influenced  by  Tennyson  to  do  strong, 
original  work.  His  satirical  poem,  "  The  Diamond 
Wedding,"  is  very  clever  in  its  way ;  and  his  pretty 
little  poem,  "  The  Doorstep,"  has  long  been  a  favor 
ite,  and  has  its  place  in  every  representative  collec 
tion  of  American  verse.  Stedman  will  probably  be 
remembered  as  a  poet  by  it  alone,  just  as  Bayard 
Taylor  (1825-1878)  will  very  likely  live  to  the  gen 
eral  reader  chiefly  as  the  author  of  the  "  Bedouin 
Love  Song,"  with  its  passionate  refrain, — 

"  I  love  thee,  I  love  but  thee, 
With  a  love  that  shall  not  die 
Till  the  sun  grows  cold, 
And  the  stars  are  old, 
And  the  leaves  of  the  Judgment  Book  unfold!" 

EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN  was  born  on  the 
eighth  of  October,  1833,  at  Hartford,  Connecticut. 


368     A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

He  was  educated  in  his  native  town,  followed  journal 
ism  in  his  youth,  and  later  became  a  stockbroker  in 
New  York.  His  first  volume  of  poems  was  published 
in  1860.  But  his  reputation  as  a  poet  has  been 
eclipsed  in  later  years  by  his  work  as  a  critic.  His 
first  volume  of  criticism,  "  Victorian  Poets,"  appeared 
in  1875,  and  it  was  followed  ten  years  later  by  a 
companion  volume,  "  Poets  of  America."  As  a  critic, 
Stedman  has  done  good  work,  but  he  lacks  both 
sting  and  sweetness.  His  criticism  is  almost  uni 
formly  laudatory,  but  it  does  not  convey  an  impres 
sion  of  deep  joy  in  what  he  praises.  The  reader 
catches  no  warmth  from  him,  feels  no  desire  to  read 
where  he  has  been  reading;  yet  he  is  himself  emi 
nently  readable.  Where  he  cannot  in  conscience 
praise,  as  in  his  consideration  of  the  extravagant 
affectations  of  the  neo-romantic  school,  he  deplores 
the  lack  of  wholesome  criticism,  and  is  disposed  to 
"  cry  out  for  an  hour  of  Jeffrey  or  Gifford."  The 
reader,  for  his  part,  feels  inclined  to  cry  out  to  Sted 
man  :  "  This  is  your  hour ;  do  not  shirk  its  duty ; 
do  it,  no  matter  how  painful."  That  he  could  do  it, 
we  feel  sure.  Although  his  criticism  deals  more  with 
technical  execution  than  with  subject  matter,  he  has 
a  right  feeling  for  what  is  fine  and  strong  in  thought 
and  emotion.  To  be  sure,  he  has  pleasant  words  to 
say  of  what  he  so  aptly  calls  the  "  stained-glass 
poetry "  of  the  Rossetti  school ;  but  it  is  a  kind  of 
poetry  which  does  not  appeal  to  him  strongly,  and 
he  overpraises  Whitman  in  a  natural  reaction  against 
extreme  culture.  But  he  recognizes  that  this  is  the 
cause  of  his  admiration,  and  confirms  Lanier's  state 
ment  quoted  above,  in  an  assertion  that  — 


Later  Writers  369 

"  Whitman's  warmest  admirers  are  of  several  classes  :  those 
who  have  carried  the  art  of  verse  to  super-refined  limits, 
and  seeing  nothing  farther  in  that  direction,  break  up  the 
mould  for  a  change ;  those  radical  enthusiasts  who,  like 
myself,  are  interested  in  whatever  hopes  to  bring  us  more 
speedily  to  the  golden  years;  lastly,  those  who,  radically 
inclined,  do  not  think  closely,  and  make  no  distinction  be 
tween  his  strength  and  weakness.  Thus  he  is,  in  a  sense, 
the  poet  of  the  over-refined  and  the  doctrinaires" 

But  Stedman  is  no  lover  of  eccentricities  for  the 
sake  of  eccentricity ;  and  though  he  calls  Browning 
"the  most  intellectual  of  poets,  Tennyson  not  ex- 
cepted,"  he  does  not  feel  that  this  excuses  his 
offences  against  form,  and  says :  — 

"  Eccentricity  is  not  a  proof  of  genius,  and  even  an  artist 
should  remember  that  originality  consists,  not  only  in  doing 
things  differently,  but  also  in  l  doing  things  better.'  The 
genius  of  Shakespeare  and  Moliere  enlarged  and  beautified 
their  style;  it  did  not  distort  it.  ...  A  poet,  however 
emotional  or  rich  in  thought,  must  not  fail  to  express  his 
conception  and  make  his  work  attractive.  .  .  .  Ruskin  has 
shown  that  in  the  course  of  years,  though  long  at  fault,  the 
masses  come  to  appreciate  any  admirable  work.  By  inver 
sion  if,  after  a  long  time  has  passed,  the  world  still  is  repelled 
by  a  singer,  and  finds  neither  rest  nor  music  in  him,  the  fault 
is  not  with  the  world;  there  is  something  deficient  in  his 
genius  —  he  is  so  much  the  less  poet." 

Stedman  sees  the  immoral  teaching  of  "  Browning's 
emotional  poetry,"  and  significantly  remarks :  — 

"That  many  complacent  English  and  American  readers 
do  not  recognize  this,  speaks  volumes  either  for  their  stu 
pidity  or  for  their  hypocrisy  and  inward  sympathy  for  a  creed 
which  they  profess  to  abhor.  .  .  . 

24 


370    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  The  '  study '  of  Browning  takes  strong  hold  upon  theo 
rists,  analysts,  dialecticians,  who  care  little  for  poetry  in  itself, 
and  who,  like  Chinese  artists,  pay  more  respect  to  the  facial 
dimensions  of  the  muse  than  to  her  essential  beauty  and  the 
divine  light  of  her  eyes." 

Stedman  does  not  believe  that  there  is  any  neces 
sary  antagonism  between  poetry  and  science,  declar 
ing  that  "  while  all  other  arts  must  change  and 
change,  the  pure  office  of  poetry  is  ever  to  idealize 
and  prophesy  of  the  unknown,"  and  that  since 
"  nature  is  limitless  in  her  work  and  transitions,  her 
book  of  secrecy  infinite,"  poetry  will  always  find  a 
fair  field  for  her  idealizations  and  prophecies. 

Stedman  is  thoroughly  sound  on  the  much  dis 
puted  question  of  realism,  which  he  thinks  should  be 
"  just  as  true  and  faithful  to  the  ideal  and  soul  of 
things  as  to  obvious  and  external  matters  of  artistic 
treatment."  He  believes  in  an  "  aristocracy  of  art 
which  by  instinct  selects  an  elevated  theme.  It  is 
better  to  beautify  life  by  an  illusive  reflection  in  a 
Claude  Lorraine  mirror  than  to  repeat  its  every 
wrinkle  in  a  sixpenny  glass."  And  elsewhere  he 
says : — 

"  The  term  realism  constantly  is  used  to  cloak  the  medioc 
rity  of  artists  whose  designs  are  stiff,  barren,  and  grotesque 
—  the  form  without  the  soul.  They  deal  with  the  minor 
facts  of  art,  unable  to  compass  the  major;  their  labor  is 
scarcely  useful  as  a  stepping-stone  to  higher  things;  if  it 
were  not  so  unimaginative,  it  would  have  more  value  as 
a  protest  against  conventionalism  and  a  guide  to  something 
new." 

Stedman  rightly  ranks  the  spirit  of  a  work  of  art 
higher  than  its  form,  and  declares  himself  in  favor  of 


Later  Writers  371 

"  simplicity,  impulse,  sincerity  as  opposed  to  ob 
scurity,  didacticism  and  the  affectation  either  of 
refinement  or  a  '  saucy  roughness,'  —  always  in  behalf 
of  imagination  and  against  the  multiform  devices 
proffered  consciously  or  unconsciously  in  lieu  of  that 
supreme  quality." 

Such  a  feeling  is  the  basis  of  sound  criticism,  and 
in  so  far  as  we  have  Stedman's  faithful  expression 
of  it,  he  stands  to-day  among  the  foremost  living 
critics  of  America  and  England. 

WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS  and  HENRY  JAMES 
are  the  leaders  of  the  realistic  school  of  fiction  in 
America.  Howells  is  of  Welsh  descent  on  his  father's 
side,  and  was  born  at  Martin's  Ferry,  Ohio,  on  the 
first  of  March,  1837.  His  father  was  a  printer  and 
the  editor  of  a  country  paper,  a  man  of  more  than 
ordinary  character,  a  lover  of  poetry,  and  a  Sweden- 
borgian  in  faith.  Says  Howells :  — 

"The  printing-office  was  my  school  from  a  very  early 
date.  My  father  thoroughly  believed  in  it,  and  he  had  his 
beliefs  as  to  work,  which  he  illustrated  as  soon  as  we  were 
old  enough  to  learn  the  trade  he  followed.  We  could  go  to 
school  and  study,  or  we  could  go  into  the  printing-office  and 
work,  with  an  equal  chance  of  learning,  but  we  could  not 
be  idle ;  we  must  do  something  for  our  souls'  sake,  though 
he  was  willing  enough  we  should  play,  and  he  liked  himself 
to  go  into  the  woods  with  us  and  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  that 
manhood  can  share  with  childhood." 

There  was  a  small  but  choice  collection  of  books 
in  his  home,  and  Howells  read  them  with  a  delight 
that  makes  his  recollections  of  his  reading  in  "  My 
Literary  Passions  "  one  of  the  most  charming  books 


372    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

he  has  written.  Goldsmith,  Cervantes,  and  Irving 
were  the  first  authors  of  his  heart,  and  when  we 
listen  to  the  fine  tribute  he  pays  to  these  old  masters 
and  feel  how  they  enriched  his  boyhood  "  beyond 
the  dreams  of  avarice,"  we  are  inclined  to  ask  him 
what  sort  of  influence  the  realistic  books  he  now 
loves  would  have  had  upon  him  then,  and  whether 
youth  can  ever  have  better  food  than  these  old 
authors  furnish.  But  he  has  answered  the  latter  part 
of  the  question  himself. 

"Upon  the  whole,  I  am  very  well  content  with  my  first 
three  loves  in  literature,  and  if  I  were  to  choose  for  any  other 
boy,  I  do  not  see  how  I  could  choose  better  than  Gold 
smith,  Cervantes,  and  Irving,  kindred  spirits  and  each  not 
a  master  only,  but  a  sweet  and  gentle  friend  whose  kindness 
could  not  fail  to  profit  him." 

In  his  love  for  Cervantes,  Howells  taught  himself 
Spanish  when  a  boy,  and  at  fifteen  thought  of  writing 
a  life  of  Cervantes.  Pushing  on  with  his  studies 
alone,  he  taught  himself  Latin  and  enough  Greek  to 
enable  him  to  read  a  chapter  in  the  New  Testament 
and  an  ode  of  Anacreon.  He  began  to  write  verses 
in  imitation,  he  tells  us,  of  Moore,  Goldsmith,  or  Pope, 
according  as  the  fancy  for  each  poet  was  uppermost. 
He  took  up  German,  plunged  into  Heine  with  the  aid 
of  a  lexicon,  and  wrote  poems  and  prose  sketches  in 
so  clever  an  imitation  of  him  that  Lowell  once  wrote 
him :  "  You  must  sweat  the  Heine  out  of  your  bones 
as  men  do  mercury." 

In  his  twenty-fourth  year,  in  connection  with  John 
James  Piatt,  he  published  a  volume  of  verse  entitled 
"  Poems  of  Two  Friends."  The  same  year  the 


Later  Writers  373 

publication  of  a  campaign  biography  of  Lincoln  was 
followed  by  his  appointment  as  consul  to  Venice. 
He  took  an  Italian  grammar  on  board  with  him  when 
he  crossed  the  Atlantic,  and  could  soon  read  the 
language  readily.  "  Venetian  Life  "  and  "  Italian 
Journeys,"  the  results  of  his  experiences  in  Italy, 
were  printed  in  a  Boston  newspaper  after  their  re 
jection  by  the  magazines. 

On  his  return  to  America  he  wrote  for  the  New 
York  papers  for  a  time,  and  then  found  employment 
on  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  as  assistant  editor.  His 
first  novel,  "  Their  Wedding  Journey,"  was  published 
in  1871.  Since  then,  he  has  written  many  novels,  the 
best  of  which  are  "  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham," 
"  A  Modern  Instance,"  "  A  Woman's  Reason,"  and 
"April  Hopes." 

As  a  novelist,  Howells  is  a  faithful  delineator  of  the 
ordinary  phases  of  the  social  life  he  sees.  His  young 
women  with  their  grace,  prettiness,  maidenly  reserves 
and  ideals,  are  natural  creations,  but  we  are  a  little 
impatient  of  the  middle-aged  and  elderly  society 
mammas,  who  all  talk  alike  in  a  stream  of  broken, 
lively  sentences,  mingling  sentiment,  fashion,  ailments, 
gossip,  in  an  absurd  confusion.  Their  talk,  as  one  of 
them  in  "  A  Foregone  Conclusion  "  says,  "just  seems 
to  be  going  on  of  itself,  —  slipping  out,  —  slipping 
out."  We  meet  this  woman  again,  young  as  well 
as  old,  and  in  an  aggravated  stage  of  slippiness,  in 
Henry  James,  and  note  with  a  protest  her  appearance 
in  the  short  stories  of  our  minor  authors.  But  even 
when  this  woman  is  on  the  scene,  Howells  is  never 
dull.  He  has  a  good  style ;  he  manages  his  charac 
ters  with  a  skill  that  comes  from  perfect  understand- 


374    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

ing  of  them,  and  though   an  ultra-realist  in  theory, 
he  is  better  than  his  theories. 

As  for  these  theories,  we  find  them  cleverly  and 
lucidly  set  forth  in  a  very  readable  little  volume  en 
titled  "  Criticism  and  Fiction."  He  tells  us  elsewhere 
that  in  his  early  days  he  had  no  "philosophized 
preference  for  reality  in  literature,"  and  we  are  prob 
ably  indebted  to  the  influence  of  his  former  hearty 
enjoyment  of  the  older  giants  in  literature  for  what 
is  bright  and  wholesome  in  his  own  work.  In  his 
"  Criticism  and  Fiction"  he  says:  — 

"  The  young  writer  who  attempts  to  report  the  phrase  and 
carriage  of  every-day  life,  who  tries  to  tell  just  how  he  has 
heard  men  talk  and  seen  them  look,  is  made  to  feel  guilty 
of  something  low  and  unworthy  by  the  stupid  people  who 
would  like  to  have  him  show  how  Shakespeare's  men  talked 
and  looked,  or  Thackeray's  or  Balzac's  or  Hawthorne's  or 
Dickens's :  he  is  instructed  to  idealize  his  personages,  that 
is,  to  take  the  lifelikeness  out  of  them  and  put  the  book- 
likeness  into  them.  He  is  approached  in  the  spirit  of  the 
wretched  pedantry  into  which  learning,  much  or  little,  al 
ways  decays  when  it  withdraws  itself  and  stands  apart  from 
experience  in  an  attitude  of  imagined  superiority,  and  which 
would  say  with  the  same  confidence  to  the  scientist :  '  I  see 
that  you  are  looking  at  a  grasshopper  there,  which  you  have 
found  in  the  grass,  and  I  suppose  you  intend  to  describe  it. 
Now  don't  waste  your  time,  and  sin  against  culture  in  that 
way.  I  Ve  got  a  grasshopper  here  which  has  been  evolved 
at  considerable  pains  and  expense  out  of  the  grasshopper  in 
general ;  in  fact,  it 's  a  type.  It 's  made  up  of  wire  and 
cardboard  very  prettily  painted  in  a  conventional  tint,  and 
it 's  perfectly  indestructible.  It  is  n't  very  much  like  a  real 
grasshopper,  but  it's  a  great  deal  nicer,  and  it's  served 
to  represent  the  notion  of  a  grasshopper  ever  since  man 


Later  Writers  375 

emerged  from  barbarism.  You  may  say  that  it's  artificial, 
but  then  it 's  ideal,  too  j  and  what  you  want  to  do  is  to  cul 
tivate  the  ideal.  You  '11  find  the  books  full  of  my  kind  of 
grasshopper,  and  scarcely  a  trace  of  yours  in  any  of  them. 
The  thing  that  you  are  proposing  to  do  is  commonplace ; 
but  if  you  say  that  it  is  n't  commonplace,  for  the  very  reason 
that  it  has  n't  been  done  before,  you  '11  have  to  admit  that 
it 's  photographic.' 

"  As  I  said,  I  hope  the  time  is  coming  when  not  only  the 
artist,  but  the  common  average  man  who  always  '  has  the 
standard  of  the  arts  in  his  power '  will  have  also  the  courage 
to  apply  it,  and  will  reject  the  ideal  grasshopper  wherever 
he  finds  it,  in  science,  in  literature,  in  art,  because  it  is  not 
1  simple,  natural,  and  honest/  because  it  is  not  like  a  real 
grasshopper.  But  I  will  own  that  I  think  the  time  is  yet 
far  off,  and  that  the  people  who  have  been  brought  up  on 
the  ideal  grasshopper,  the  heroic  grasshopper,  the  impas 
sioned  grasshopper,  the  self-devoted,  adventure-full,  good, 
old,  romantic,  cardboard  grasshopper,  must  die  out  before 
the  simple,  honest,  and  natural  grasshopper  can  have  a  fair 
field." 

This  is  an  amusing  and  fair  protest  of  which  every 
sensible  man  and  woman  will  heartily  approve,  but 
it  does  not  touch  the  real  question  at  issue  between 
idealism  and  the  realism  which  we  have  from  France, 
and  in  the  latest  fiction  from  the  farming  districts 
of  the  West,  to  which  Howells  gives  his  unqualified 
praise  and  encouragement.  The  question  is  not 
whether  we  shall  have  the  real  grasshopper  or  the 
mock  one,  —  by  all  means  let  us  have  the  real  one, — 
but  whether  we  shall  have  nothing  but  grasshoppers 
in  our  literature  when  we  might  have  song-birds  and 
butterflies  as  well.  Are  we  to  have  snarling  and 
cursing  and  the  commonest  vulgar  slang  in  place  of 


376    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

fair  words  and  good  English?  Are  we  to  have  the 
sentiment  (if  you  choose  to  call  the  belief  by  that 
name)  that  a  man  may  rise  superior  to  his  surround 
ings  and  be  happy  even  if  poor  and  in  cheap  clothes, 
supplanted  by  the  sentiment  that  it  takes  broadcloth 
and  money  to  make  him  a  man?  Must  we  senti 
mentalize  over  a  toad  and  blame  nature  for  not  giv 
ing  him  the  feathers  of  a  jay?  Even  a  photograph 
needs  retouching  to  remove  the  accentuated  lines 
and  harshness  of  light  and  shade  due  to  the  absence 
of  the  softening  play  of  life.  Must  there  be  no  re 
touching  in  realism?  Are  we  never  to  go  deeper 
than  surfaces  ?  Is  the  harsh  crude  realism,  so  hope 
lessly  dull  and  vulgar  and  so  drearily  unreal  that  the 
soul  sickens  at  it,  truer  than  all  that  makes  life  worth 
living?  truer  than  that  which  we  feel  in  our  own 
hearts  when  the  blood  in  our  veins  is  young  and 
warm  and  pure?  If  the  question  of  imagination  is 
to  be  left  entirely  out  of  art,  then  journalism  which 
records  the  daily  happenings  of  the  streets  and  high 
ways,  and  by  preference  the  sins  and  crimes  of 
humanity,  will  fulfil  the  office  of  the  poets  and 
novelists,  and  the  sensational  newspaper,  the  organ 
of  realism,  is  destined  to  be  the  literature  of  the 
future.  Genius  will  not  be  required  to  write  it; 
the  only  qualification  will  be  a  liking  for  bad 
odors  and  a  prurient  curiosity  eager  to  sniff  them 
out. 

In  that  admirable  series  of  essays  entitled  "  The 
Relation  of  Literature  to  Life,"  written  by  Charles 
Dudley  Warner,  is  to  be  found  a  timely  and  most 
sensible  essay  on  Modern  Fiction.  In  the  course  of 
this  essay  Warner  says :  — 


Later  Writers  377 

"  In  nature  there  is  nothing  vulgar  to  the  poet,  and  in 
human  life  there  is  nothing  uninteresting  to  the  artist,  but 
nature  and  human  life  for  the  purposes  of  fiction  need 
a  creative  genius.  The  importation  into  the  novel  of  the 
vulgar,  sordid,  and  ignoble  in  life  is  always  unbearable,  unless 
genius  first  fuses  the  raw  material  in  its  alembic. 

"When,  therefore,  we  say  that  one  of  the  worst  charac 
teristics  of  modern  fiction  is  its  so-called  truth  to  nature,  we 
mean  that  it  disregards  the  higher  laws  of  art,  and  attempts 
to  give  us  unidealized  pictures  of  life.  The  failure  is  not 
that  vulgar  themes  are  treated,  but  that  the  treatment  is 
vulgar ;  not  that  common  life  is  treated,  but  that  the  treat 
ment  is  common  j  not  that  care  is  taken  with  details,  but 
that  no  selection  is  made,  and  everything  is  photographed 
regardless  of  its  artistic  value.  I  am  sure  that  no  one  ever 
felt  any  repugnance  on  being  introduced  by  Cervantes  to 
the  muleteers,  contrabandistas,  servants  and  serving-maids, 
and  idle  vagabonds  of  Spain,  any  more  than  to  an  acquaint 
ance  with  the  beggar  boys  and  street  gamins  on  the  can 
vases  of  Murillo.  And  I  believe  that  the  philosophic  rea 
son  of  the  disgust  of  Heine  and  of  every  critic  with  the 
English  bourgeoisie  novels  describing  the  petty  humdrum 
life  of  the  middle  classes,  was  simply  the  want  of  art  in  the 
writers ;  the  failure  on  their  part  to  see  that  a  literal  tran 
script  of  nature  is  poor  stuff  in  literature.  .  .  . 

(t  The  characteristics  which  are  prominent  when  we  think 
of  our  recent  fiction  are  a  wholly  unidealized  view  of  human 
society,  which  has  got  the  name  of  realism ;  a  delight  in 
representing  the  worst  phases  of  social  life;  an  extreme 
analysis  of  persons  and  motives ;  the  sacrifice  of  action  to 
psychological  study  •  the  substitution  of  studies  of  character 
for  anything  like  a  story ;  a  notion  that  it  is  not  artistic,  and 
that  it  is  untrue  to  nature  to  bring  any  novel  to  a  definite 
consummation,  and  especially  to  end  it  happily ;  and  a 
despondent  tone  about  society,  politics,  and  the  whole  drift 


37 8    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

of  modern  life.     Judged  by  our  fiction,  we  are  in  an  irre 
deemably  bad  way.  .  .  . 

"  The  artist  who  so  represents  vulgar  life  that  I  am  more 
in  love  with  my  kind,  the  satirist  who  so  depicts  vice  and 
villany  that  I  am  strengthened  in  my  moral  fibre,  has  vindi 
cated  his  choice  of  material." 

The  story  of  Howells's  own  life  as  he  tells  it  in  his 
various  books  of  an  autobiographical  nature  is  the 
best  bit  of  realism  of  the  genuine,  delightful  sort,  that 
we  have  had  from  his  hands.  Few  narratives  are 
prettier  than  his  pleasant  little  reminiscence,  "  My 
Year  in  a  Log  Cabin."  Howells's  father  had  failed  in 
a  newspaper  venture  in  Dayton,  Ohio,, and  after  the 
failure  removed  with  his  family,  in  the  fall  of  1850,  to 
a  small  log  cabin  on  the  Little  Miami  River.  He 
had  charge  of  a  saw  and  grist  mill  there.  The  family 
lived  in  a  very  primitive  way.  The  walls  of  the  little 
log  house  were  covered  with  newspapers;  a  rude 
ladder  formed  the  stairway  to  the  upper  story,  whose 
imperfect  roof  let  the  snow  sift  through  in  winter. 
But  there  was  no  consciousness  of  poverty  in  this 
richly  gifted  boy.  The  whole  experience  was  a 
romantic  episode  to  which  he  looks  backward  in 
manhood  with  fondness,  and  would  not  have  missed  it 
for  much.  It  is  this  spirit  of  joy  and  triumph  over 
material  losses  and  wants  that  we  miss  in  the  liter 
ature  of  sordid  realism,  and  which  ought  to  be  there 
because  it  is  true,  and  the  absence  of  which  makes  it 
the  apotheosis  of  dulness.  It  is  the  same  spirit  that 
sings  through  Lowell's  poem  of  "  Aladdin," 

"  When  I  was  a  beggarly  boy 

And  lived  in,  a  cellar  damp, 
I  had  not  a  friend  nor  a  toy, 
But  I  had  Aladdin's  lamp. 


Later  Writers  379 

When  I  could  not  sleep  for  the  cold, 

I  had  fire  enough  in  my  brain, 
And  builded  with  roofs  of  gold 

My  beautiful  castles  in  Spain. 

"  Since  then  I  have  toiled  day  and  night, 

I  have  money  and  power  good  store, 
But  I  'd  give  all  my  lamps  of  silver  bright 

For  the  one  that  is  mine  no  more. 
Take,  fortune,  whatever  you  choose, 

You  gave  and  may  take  again  ; 
I  have  nothing  't  would  pain  me  to  lose, 

For  I  own  no  more  castles  in  Spain." 

It  is  that  light  and  warmth  from  the  fire  in  the 
brain  that  we  ask  for  in  literature;  not  sensation 
alism,  nor  vulgarity,  nor  silly  romanticism,  nor  cold 
blooded  minute  cataloguing  of  commonplaces.  The 
great  geniuses  have  always  given  us  this  warming 
light,  and  by  that  experience  we  are  warranted  in 
believing  that  they  will  continue  to  give  it  to  us,  and 
we  have  but  to  wait  patiently  for  their  coming  again. 

HENRY  JAMES  was  born  in  New  York  City  in  1843. 
His  father  was  an  author  of  distinction,  and  gave  his 
son  exceptional  advantages  in  education.  James  has 
lived  almost  all  his  life  abroad,  and  is  probably  more 
at  home  in  Paris  or  London  than  in  his  native  city. 
His  writings  are  always  the  easy  work  of  a  man  of 
culture,  and  would  be  always  delightful  if  we  were  not 
sometimes  irritated  by  a  half-contemptuous,  half-weary 
air  and  talk  of  "  prigs  "  and  "  bores,"  as  if  from  that 
superior  height  of  worldly  knowledge  where  one  has 
sucked  the  marrow  out  of  life  and  has  nothing  left 
but  the  dry  bones.  It  is  this  unsympathetic,  dis 
illusioned  attitude  that  makes  Henry  James  at  times 


380    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

the  least  satisfactory  of  novelists.  His  characters 
often  catch  his  weariness  and  repeat  it  in  wearisome 
dialogues,  which  with  long  pages  of  close  analysis 
make  up  the  bulk  of  his  novels.  His  theory  of  fiction 
is  that  — 

"  character,  in  any  sense  we  get  at  it,  is  action,  and  action 
is  plot,  and  any  plot  which  hangs  together,  if  it  pretends  to 
interest  us  only  in  the  fashion  of  a  Chinese  puzzle,  plays  upon 
our  emotions,  our  suspense,  by  means  of  personal  references. 
We  care  what  happens  to  people  only  in  proportion  as  we 
know  what  people  are." 

True ;  but  to  know  what  people  are  it  is  not  neces 
sary  to  pull  them  to  pieces  and  put  them  together 
again,  any  more  than  it  is  necessary  to  understand 
the  mechanism  of  a  clock  in  order  to  tell  what  time 
it  is  by  it.  And  a  much  higher  degree  of  creative 
genius  is  implied  in  the  delineation  of  a  character 
which  reveals  itself  in  the  conversation  and  action  of 
a  story,  than  in  the  analytic  method,  which  is  much 
like  an  artist's  writing  "  This  is  a  horse  "  underneath 
the  picture  of  one.  Then,  too,  the  intelligent  reader 
is  deprived  by  over-analysis  of  making  his  own  inter 
pretation  ;  he  can  have  no  curiosity  about  characters 
whose  every  emotion  and  thought  is  subjected  to 
minute  dissection,  and  is  consequently  satisfied  with 
one  reading  of  his  story,  and  rarely  takes  it  up  again. 
The  best  known  of  James's  novels  are  "  An  Inter 
national  Episode,"  "  Daisy  Miller,"  "  The  Portrait  of 
a  Lady,"  "  The  American,"  "  The  Princess  Casimas- 
sima,"  and  "  The  Bostonians."  The  last-named  book, 
though  an  extremely  disagreeable  novel,  is  a  clever 
satire  of  woman's  rights,  mesmeric  healers,  and  phil- 


Later  Writers  381 

anthropic  humbugs  in  general ;  and  it  pleads,  like  its 
hero,  against  the  "  feminization  of  the  age."  Says  this 
intrepid  and  conservative  hero  to  a  pretty  girl-lecturer 
on  woman's  rights  and  wrongs :  — 

"  I  am  so  far  from  thinking,  as  you  set  forth  the  other 
night,  that  there  is  not  enough  woman  in  our  general  life, 
that  it  has  long  been  much  pressed  home  to  me  that  there  is 
a  great  deal  too  much.  The  whole  generation  is  woman 
ized  ;  the  masculine  tone  is  passing  out  of  the  world ;  it 's  a 
feminine,  a  nervous,  hysterical,  chattering,  canting  age,  an 
age  of  hollow  phrases  and  false  delicacy  and  exaggerated 
solicitudes  and  coddled  sensibilities,  which  if  we  don't  look 
out  will  usher  in  the  reign  of  mediocrity  of  the  feeblest,  the 
flattest,  and  the  most  pretentious  that  has  ever  been.  The 
masculine  character,  the  ability  to  dare  and  endure,  to  know 
and  yet  not  fear  reality,  to  look  the  world  in  the  face  and 
take  it  for  what  it  is  —  a  very  queer  and  partly  very  base 
mixture  —  that  is  what  I  want  to  preserve,  or  rather,  I  might 
say,  to  recover ;  and  I  must  tell  you  that  I  don't  in  the  least 
care  what  becomes  of  you  ladies  while  I  make  the  attempt." 

James  has  done  exceptionally  fine  work  as  a  criti 
cal  essayist  in  his  two  charming  volumes,  "  Partial 
Portraits"  and  " French  Poets  and  Novelists."  We 
find  in  these  essays  more  intellectual  shrewdness  than 
in  Stedman,  and  a  more  satisfactory  interpretation  of 
realism  than  in  Howells,  —  a  greater  respect  for  truth 
without  literalness,  and  a  fuller  appreciation  of  the 
personal  element  in  literature.  On  the  question  of 
morality  in  art,  he  has  a  word  to  say  which  it  is  good 
to  hear  and  no  less  pleasant  to  remember  as  being  in 
harmony  with  the  spirit  of  the  great  bulk  of  American 
literature. 


382    A  General  Survey  of  American  Literature 

"  To  deny  the  relevancy  of  subject  matter  and  the  impor 
tance  of  the  moral  quality  of  a  work  of  art  strikes  us  as,  in 
two  words,  ineffably  puerile.  .  .  .  There  is  very  little  doubt 
what  the  great  artists  would  say.  These  geniuses  feel  that  the 
whole  thinking  man  is  one,  and  that  to  count  out  the  moral 
element  in  one's  appreciation  of  an  artistic  total  is  exactly  as 
sane  as  it  would  be  (if  the  total  were  a  poem)  to  eliminate 
all  the  words  in  three  syllables,  or  to  consider  only  such  por 
tions  of  it  as  had  been  written  by  candlelight.  The  crudity 
of  sentiment  of  the  advocates  of '  art  for  art '  is  often  a  strik 
ing  example  of  the  fact  that  a  great  deal  of  what  is  called 
culture  may  fail  to  dissipate  a  well-seated  provincialism  of 
spirit.  They  talk  of  morality  as  Miss  Edgeworth's  infantine 
heroes  and  heroines  talk  of  'physic,'  —  they  allude  to  its 
being  put  into  and  kept  out  of  a  work  of  art,  put  into  and 
kept  out  of  one's  appreciation  of  the  same,  as  if  it  were 
a  colored  fluid  kept  in  a  big-labelled  bottle  in  some  mysteri 
ous  intellectual  closet.  It  is  in  reality  simply  a  part  of  the 
essential  richness  of  inspiration  —  it  has  nothing  ti  do  with 
the  artistic  process,  and  it  has  everything  to  do  with  the  artis 
tic  effect.  The  more  a  work  of  art  feels  it  at  its  source,  the 
richer  it  is  ;  the  less  it  feels  it,  the  poorer  it  is.  People  of  a 
large  taste  prefer  rich  works  to  poor  ones,  and  they  are  not 
inclined  to  assent  to  the  assumption  that  the  process  is  the 
whole  work." 


IN  DEX 


"  ABBOTSFORD,"  Irving,  61. 

Acadian  Outrage,  the,  "  Evangeline  " 
a  result  of  it,  n;  Parkman's  view 
of  it,  343. 

"Adventures  of  Hans  Pfaal,"  Poe, 
244. 

Alcott,  Amos  Bronson,  typical  philos 
opher  of  Transcendentalism,  123; 
resembles  Wordsworth's  hero  of  the 
"  Excursion,"  123  ;  fails  as  a 
teacher,  124;  Carlyle's  opinion  of 
him,  124 ;  his  "  Transcendental  Wild 
Oats,"  124-126.  See  also  114,  133, 
165,  296. 

"  Alhambra,"  Irving,  60,  69. 

"  American,  The,  "  James,  380. 

American  criticism  chiefly  indiscrim 
inate  laudation,  14. 

American  literature,  how  to  form  a 
just  conception  of  its  range  and 
value,  9 ;  its  lack  of  supreme  excel 
lence,  9;  apology  for  the  lack,  10; 
how  affected  by  struggles  against 
wrong,  ii ;  wholesome  and  clean,  12, 
13,  31 ;  a  product  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  18 ;  optimistic,  31,  32 ; 
good-natured,  32. 

American  writers  as  critics,  13,  14; 
mostly  college-bred,  13. 

w  Among  my  Books,"  Lowell,  317. 

"  Annabel  Lee,"  Poe,  256. 

"  April  Hopes,"  Howells,  373. 

"Arab  Steed,"  Very,  129. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  his  estimate  of  Em 
erson,  172. 

"  Art,  Literature,  and  the  Drama," 
Fuller,  137. 

"Astoria,"  Irving,  61. 

"At  Home  and  Abroad,"  Fuller, 
137. 


"  Autobiography,"  Franklin,  18,   19, 

20,  29. 
"Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table," 

Holmes,  264. 
"  Autumn,"  Thoreau,  303. 

"  BALLADS  and  Other  Poems,"  Long 
fellow,  206. 

Bancroft's  "History  of  the  United 
States,"  100.  See  also  181. 

"  Barbara  Frietchie,"  Whittier,  224. 

"  Barefoot  Boy,"  Whittier,  224. 

"  Battlefield,"  Bryant,  98. 

"  Bedouin  Love  Song,"  Bayard  Tay 
lor,  367. 

"  Bells,"  Poe,  256. 

"  Berenice,"  Poe,  247. 

"Biglow  Papers,"   Lowell,    12,   311, 

313,  3H,  3'7,  325-327. 

"  Black  Cat,"  Poe,  245. 

"Blithedale  Romance,"  Hawthorne, 
120,  181,  186,  194,  196. 

"  Bonaparte,"  Channing,  34. 

"  Bostonians,"  James,  380. 

"  Bracebridge  Hall,"  Irving,  57,  69. 

Breakfast-Table  Series,  Holmes,  271. 

Brook  Farm,  116,  119-122,  181-184. 

Browne,  Charles  Brockden,  our  first 
novelist,  17,  18;  "  Wieland,"  his 
first  novel,  17.  See  also  13,  138. 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  our  first  dis 
tinguished  poet,  85 ;  birth  and  par 
entage,  85  ;  precocity  as  a  versifier, 
85  ;  youthful  environment,  85  ; 
parental  discipline  in  his  genera 
tion,  86 ;  love  of  external  nature, 
87  ;  becomes  a  lawyer,  87  ;  poem 
"  To  a  Waterfowl,"  87  ;  editor  of 
the  "Literary  Review,"  88;  mar 
riage,  89 ;  editor  of  "  New  York 


Index 


Evening  Post,"  89";  travels,  89; 
prose  writings,  89 ;  conscientious 
ness  as  a  journalist,  90  ;  his  politics, 
91  ;  translates  Homer,  91 ;  death,  91 ; 
appearance,  92 ;  tenderness,  92  ; 
simplicity  of  style  and  manner,  93 ; 
compared  to  Wordsworth,  94-97. 
See  also  13,  18,  30,  78. 
Burns,  influence  of  his  poetry  on 
Whittier,  218,  219.  See  also  31, 

3*4. 
Burroughs,  John,  350,  351. 

"  CAPE  COD,"  Thoreau,  302,  305. 

"Captain  Bonneville,"  Irving,  61. 

"Captain,  O  my  Captain,"  Whitman, 
360. 

Carlyle,  his  definition  of  history, 
99;  opinion  of  "The  Dial,"  116  ; 
opinion  of  A.  B.  Alcott,  124; 
friendship  with  Emerson,  150,  151; 
Tyndall  on  his  influence,  174.  See 
also  15,  31,  106, 169,  249,  283. 

"Chambered  Nautilus,"  Holmes,  268. 

"Changeling,"  Lowell,  318. 

Channing,  William  Ellery,  a  Unita 
rian  divine,  33 ;  essays,  addresses, 
sermons,  33,  34  ;  birth,  parentage, 
boyhood,  35 ;  early  religious  doubts, 
35  ;  as  a  student,  36-39  ;  de 
testation  of  slavery,  38 ;  in  Vir 
ginia,  38 ;  self-denial,  38-43 ;  dreams 
of  communism,  40 ;  ordained  as  a 
minister,  42  ;  marriage,  44 ;  on  the 
training  of  children,  44 ;  visits  Eu 
rope,  44 ;  death,  45  ;  as  a  reformer, 
45-47  ;  as  a  defender  of  freedom  of 
thought,  47 ;  faith  in  human  prog 
ress,  48;  defence  of  Unitarianism, 
49 ;  appreciation  of  literature  and 
art,  50.  See  also  18. 

"City  in  the  Sea,"  Poe,  256. 

Clarke,  James  Freeman,  48,  50,  114. 

Clemens,  Samuel  Langhorne  (Mark 
Twain),  82,  350. 

"Columbine,"  Very,  128. 

"Columbus,"  Lowell,  318. 

"Columbus,"  life,  Irving,59. 

Combe,  socialist,  119. 

"  Come  up  from  the  Fields,  Father," 
Whitman,  360. 


"  Comic,"  the,  Emerson,  156. 
"Commemoration  Ode,"  Lowell,  11- 

12,  3"»327. 

"  Common  Sense,"  Paine,  17. 

"Concord  Days,"  Alcott,  190. 

"  Concord  Ode,"  Lowell,  318. 

"  Conqueror  Worm,"  Poe,  256. 

"Conquest  of  Granada,"  Irving,  59. 

"  Conquest  of  Mexico,"  Prescott,  105, 
107. 

"Conquest  of  Peru,"  Prescott,  105, 
109. 

"  Conquest  of  Spain,"  Irving,  59. 

"Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,"  Parkman, 
338. 

"  Conversations  on  the  Bible,"  Alcott, 
123. 

"Conversations  on  the  Old  Poets," 
Lowell,  314. 

Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  birth,  par 
entage,  boyhood,  70 ;  enters  Yale, 
71 ;  goes  to  sea,  71 ;  marries  and  be 
comes  a  farmer,  71;  appearance, 
71  ;  first  novel,  72  ;  removes  to  New 
York,  72  ;  models  the  hero  of  "  The 
Pilot "  after  Paul  Jones,  72  ;  abroad 
for  seven  years,  73  ;  habits,  73 ;  dis 
agreeable  manners,  74;  on  patriot 
ism  and  provincialism,  73,  75-77; 
lack  of  humor,  76  ;  cheerful  at  home, 
78  ;  death,  78  ;  defends  his  concep 
tion  of  the  Indian,  79 ;  cause  of  his 
popularity,  80  ;  an  estimate  of  his 
powers  as  a  writer,  80-84.  See 
also  n,  18,  30. 

"  Count  Frontenac  and  New  France 
under  the  Reign  of  Louis  XIV.," 
Parkman,  340. 

"  Country  Life,"  Stoddard,  365. 

"  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,"  Long 
fellow,  211. 

"Crisis,"  Paine,  17. 

"Criticism  and  Fiction,"  Howells, 
374- 

"  DAISY  MILLER,"  James,  380. 
"Death   of    the    Flowers,"   Bryant, 

97- 

"  Deerslayer,"  Cooper,  78. 
"Democracy  and  other  Addresses," 

Lowell,  318,  332. 


Index 


385 


Democracy  unfavorable  to  the  produc 
tion  of  a  classical  literature,  n,  12, 
360. 

"  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom,"  Poe, 
244. 

"  Diamond  Wedding,"  Stedman,  367. 

"  Dolliver  Romance,"  Hawthorne,  189. 

"  Doorstep,"  Stedman,  367. 

"  Drum  Taps,"  Whitman,  360. 

"EARLY  Spring  in  Massachusetts," 
Thoreau,  303. 

"  Eckermann's  Conversations  with 
Goethe,"  Fuller,  134. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  our  most  distin 
guished  metaphysician,  why  ex 
cluded  from  this  study  of  literature, 
15;  "Freedom  of  the  Will,"  16. 
See  also  18,  261. 

"  Elevation  of  the  Laboring  Classes," 
Channing,  34. 

"Elsie  Venner,"  Holmes,  264,  273. 

"  Embargo,"  Bryant,  85. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  birth,  ances 
try,  boyhood,  143-145 ;  a  school 
teacher,  145  ;  love  of  nature,  146  ; 
ordained  as  a  minister,  147 ;  first 
marriage,  death  of  his  wife,  148 ; 
resigns  pastorate  in  Boston,  149 ; 
visits  Europe,  sees  "  the  faces  of  the 
greatest  living  English  writers," 
and  forms  a  friendship  with  Carlyle, 
150-152  ;  marries  Miss  Jackson  and 
settles  in  Concord,  153  ;  birth  of  his 
first  child  and  publication  of  his  first 
work,  154;  poems,  155;  lectures 
and  essays,  154-169,  173;  lack  of 
emotional  susceptibility,  148,  156, 
159  ;  indignation  at  slavery,  160  ; 
memory  begins  to  fail,  161  ;  revisits 
Europe,  161 ;  death,  161 ;  appear 
ance  and  social  relations,  162  ;  liter 
ary  methods,  163;  intellect,  164- 
171;  inconsistency,  165-167;  as  a 
critic,  165-171 ;  literary  style,  169; 
Matthew  Arnold's  estimate  of  him, 
172  ;  Hermann  Grimm  on  his  influ 
ence,  174  ;  Tyndall  on  his  influence, 
174;  his  opinion  of  Hawthorne,  191  ; 
of  Longfellow,  198  ;  life,  by  Holmes, 
275  ;  friendship  with  Thoreau,  290, 


293,  296,  297;  letter  to  Whitman, 

35J>  354-    See  also  *3»  3°>  31*  32> 

33,  113,  114,  124, 125,  127, 130, 141, 

298,  299,  300,  3x1. 

English  Traits,"  Emerson,  155. 

Eternal  Goodness,"  Whittier,  224. 

Eureka,  a  Prose  Poem,"  Poe,  238, 

257. 

Evangeline,"  Longfellow,  n,  207. 

Excursions   in    Field  and  Forest," 

Thoreau,  302. 

FABLE  for  Critics,"  Lowell,  14,  314, 

327- 

Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,"  Poe, 

237- 

"  Fanshawe,"  Hawthorne,  180. 
Federalist,"  essays,  17. 

F6nelon,  33. 

"Ferdinand  and  Isabella,"  Prescott, 
104,  106. 

«l  Festus,"  Bailey,  139. 

"  Fireside  Travels,"  Lowell,  317. 

Fiske,  John,  108,  340,  350. 

"  Flight  of  Youth,"  Stoddard,  366. 

"  Foregone  Conclusion,"  Howells,373. 

"  Forest  Hymn,"  Bryant,  97. 

Fourier,  socialist,  117. 

"  France  and  England  in  N.  America," 
Parkman,  338. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  why  excluded 
from  this  study  of  literature,  15  ; 
Autobiography,  19,  20 ;  "  Poor 
Richard's  Almanac,"  19,  21-24 ; 
inventions,  discoveries,  and  honors, 
24;  opinion  of  animal  magnetism, 
25  ;  philanthropic  efforts,  25-27  ; 
literary  style,  27,  28  ;  as  "  a  typical 
American,"  29.  See  also  18. 

"Freedom  of  the  Will,"  Edwards, 
16,  18. 

"  French  Poets  and  Novelists,"  James, 
381. 

"Friendship,"  Emerson,  173. 

"  Fringed  Gentian,"  Bryant,  97. 

Fuller  Ossoli,  Sarah  Margaret,  the 
completest  representative  of  Tran 
scendentalism,  130;  birth,  precocity, 
pride,  131  ;  defects  of  her  character, 
132;  a  school-teacher.  133;  conver 
sation  classes  in  Boston,  134  ;  editoi 


386 


Index 


of  the  "Dial"  and  literary  critic 
on  the  "  New  York  Tribune,"  134  ; 
visits  Europe,  espouses  the  cause 
of  Young  Italy,  marries  Marquis 
Ossoli,  135  ;  herself,  husband,  and 
child  drowned,  136;  her  failure  as  a 
critic  and  a  writer,  133,  137-140  ; 
mental  and  social  powers,  137,  140- 
142.  See  also  114,  123,  130. 

GENERAL  sketch  of  American  litera 
ture,  9-32. 

"  Gladness  of  Nature,"  Bryant,  97. 

"  Gleanings  from  Europe,"  Cooper,  75. 

"Gold  Bug,"  Poe,  237,  244. 

Goldsmith,  his  works  a  delight  to 
Washington  Irving,  62 ;  his  Life, 
by  Irving,  62,  69.  See  also  87. 

"  Grandfather's  Chair,"  Hawthorne, 
181. 

Greeley,  Horace,  74,  134,  300. 

Grimm,  H.,  on  Emerson's  influence, 
174. 

"  Guardian  Angel,"  Holmes,  264,  273. 

"  HALF-CENTURY  of  Conflict,"  Park- 
man,  340. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  17. 

"  Hampton  Beach,"  Whittier,  224. 

"  Haunted  Palace,"  Poe,  256. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  the  rare  char 
acter  of  his  genius,  176;  ancestry, 
birth,  boyhood,  177;  student  at 
Bowdoin,  178;  his  retired  life,  177- 
180,  190;  earliest  publications,  180; 
an  officer  in  the  custom-house,  181 ; 
connection  with  Brook  Farm,  181- 
183;  marriage,  183;  removal  to 
Salem,  184;  resumes  literary  work 
on  finding  the  story  of  Hester 
Prynne,  185  ;  removes  to  Lenox 
and  to  Concord,  186  ;  sensitiveness, 

187,  191 ;    power  of  soul-analysis, 

188,  194-196 ;    visits    Italy,    188  ; 
returns   to   Concord,    189 ;     death, 
190;    Emerson's   opinion   of    him, 
191 ;  introspective  character  of  his 
early   work,    192 ;    his    style,     197. 
See  also  u,  13,  32,  92,  120,  311. 

"  Heartsease  and  Rue,"  Lowell,  318. 
"  Heritage,"  Lowell,  318. 


'•  Heroism,"  Emerson,  173. 

"Hiawatha,"  Longfellow,  209-211. 

Historian,  qualifications  of  a  success 
ful,  99. 

Historians,  our  best,  99. 

History,  Carlyle's  definition  of  it,  99. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  his  birth, 
ancestry,  boyhood,  260 ;  early  re 
volt  from  dogma,  261  ;  graduates 
from  Harvard,  262  ;  studies  medi 
cine  in  Paris,  262  ;  visits  England 
and  Italy,  263  ;  professor  of  anat 
omy  at  Dartmouth  College,  263 ; 
marriage,  264  ;  a  professor  in  Har 
vard,  264  ;  literary  works,  264,  267- 
275  ;  death,  265  ;  habits  and  tastes, 
266;  his  estimate  of  the  "new 
woman,"  271  ;  on  the  treatment  of 
criminals,  273-274 ;  his  best  work, 
275.  See  also  13,  163. 

"  Home  as  Found,"  Cooper,  76. 

"  Home,  Sweet  Home,"  Payne,  58. 

"  Homeward  Bound,"  Cooper,  76. 

"  House  of  Seven  Gables,"  Haw 
thorne,  i 86,  194-196. 

"  Houstonia,"  Very,  129. 

Howells,  William  Dean,  birth,  descent, 
early  training,  371  ;  teaches  himself 
Spanish,  Latin,  Greek,  German, 
372  ;  appointed  as  consul  to  Venice, 
studies  Italian,  373 ;  writings,  372, 
373 ;  love  of  realism  as  a  novelist 
and  a  critic,  373-376;  "Criticism 
and  Fiction,"  374;  "My  Year  in 
a  Log  Cabin,"  378.  See  also  381. 

"  Hundred  Days  in  Europe,"  Holmes, 
265. 

"  Hymn  to  the  Beautiful,"  Stoddard, 
366. 

"  Hyperion,"  Longfellow,  205,  206. 

"ICHABOD,"  Whittier,  224. 

"  Imp  of  the  Perverse,"  Poe,  246. 

"Indian   Summer  Reverie,"  Lowell, 

318- 

"  In  School  Days,"  Whittier,  224. 

"  International  Episode,"  James,  380. 

Irving,  Washington,  his  humor  and 
pathos,  52 ;  birth,  boyhood,  52 ; 
studies  law,  53  ;  faithfulness  to  the 
memory  of  his  early  love,  54,  55; 


Index 


visits  Europe,  56 ;  abroad  for  seven 
teen  years,  57-60;  "Salmagundi," 
56;  Knickerbocker's  "History  of 
New  York,"  57  ;  Geoffrey  Crayon's 
"  Sketch-Book,"  57  ;  his  opinion  of 
Scott,  58  ;  diligence  as  a  writer,  58  ; 
in  the  Alhambra,  59;  appointed 
secretary  of  legation  at  London,  59 ; 
visits  the  prairies  of  the  West,  60 ; 
settles  at  Sunnyside,  60  ;  appointed 
as  minister  to  Spain,  61  ;  returns  to 
Sunnyside,  62 ;  delight  in  Gold 
smith's  writings,  62  ;  last  work,  a 
life  of  Washington,  63  ;  his  green 
old  age,  63  ;  death,  64  ;  mental  and 
physical  characteristics,  64-67  ;  lit 
erary  habits,  68 ;  estimate  of  his 
writings,  57,  68,  69.  See  also  18,  30. 
"Italian  Journeys,"  Howells,  373. 

JAMES,  Henry,  birth,  379  ;  an  unsym 
pathetic  writer,  379;  his  theory  of 
fiction,  380;  novels,  380  ;  critical 
essays,  381 ;  on  morality  in  art,  382. 
See  also  373. 

James,  Henry,  the  elder,  157, 158. 

Jay,  John,  17. 

"  Jesuits  in   N.  America,"  Parkman, 

339- 
"John  of  Barneveld,"  Motley,  279, 

281. 
"  June,"  Bryant,  97. 

"  KAVANAGH,"  Longfellow,  208. 
Knickerbocker's     "  History    of    New 
York,"  Irving,  57,  69. 

LANIER,  Sidney,  251,  359. 

"La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the 

Great  West,"  Parkman,  339. 
Lassalle,  socialist,  118. 
"  Last  Leaf,"  Holmes,  268. 
"  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  Cooper,  73. 
"  Last  WTalk  in  Autumn,"  Whittier, 

224. 

"  Latest  Literary  Essays,"  Lowell,  318. 
"  Leaves  of   Grass,"  WTiitman,  351, 

353-35 5»  358,  362,  363. 
"  Legend  of  Brittany,"  Lowell,  313. 
"Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow,"  Irving, 

57- 


"  Letters  from  the  East,"  Bryant,  89. 

'  Letters  of  a  Traveller,"  Bryant,  89. 

'Life  Within  and  Life  Without," 
Fuller,  137. 

'  Lincoln,"  life,  Howells,  373. 
Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  Emer 
son's  estimate  of  him,  198 ;  his 
place  among  poets,  198  ;  birth,  par 
entage,  boyhood,  199;  travels  in 
Europe,  200-203 ;  appointed  to  a 
professorship  at  Bowdoin,  200,  202, 
203  ;  earliest  publications,  203 ; 
first  marriage,  203 ;  in  Europe 
again,  203 ;  death  of  his  wife,  204  ; 
his  life  at  Cambridge,  204  ;  more  a 
literary  man  than  a  professor,  206 ; 
abroad  again,  206 ;  marries  Miss 
Appleton,  206;  "  Evangeline,"  n, 
207;  "  Kavanagh,"  208;  resigns 
professorship,  209  ;  "  Hiawatha," 
209;  death  of  Mrs.  Longfellow, 
212;  revisits  Europe,  212;  death, 
212;  habitual  serenity,  213  ;  genius, 
214.  See  also  13,  30,  32,  58,  105, 

139- 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  his  powers  as 
an  art  critic,  311,  328-331 ;  ancestry, 
birth,  graduation  from  Harvard, 
312;  abandons  law  and  writes 
poetry,  312 ;  marries,  settles  at 
Cambridge,  313  ;  protests  against 
the  Mexican  war,  313;  prose  writ 
ings,  313,  314,  331,  332;  visits  Eu 
rope,  315  ;  death  of  his  wife,  315  ; 
appointed  to  the  chair  of  belles 
lettres  in  Harvard,  315 ;  second 
marriage,  315;  editor  of  "Atlantic 
Monthly"  and  of  "  N.  American 
Review,"  31 5  ;  dislikes  college  work, 
316;  writes  criticism  and  poetry 
in  college  years,  317,  318;  min 
ister  to  Spain,  318 ;  political  writ 
ings,  318;  studies  Spanish,  318; 
minister  to  Britain,  319;  wife 
dies,  319;  returns  to  Cambridge, 
319 ;  death,  320  ;  habits,  character, 
and  appearance,  320-323  ;  "  The 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  323-325; 
"The  Biglow  Papers,"  n,  313,314, 
^T7?  325~^275  did  not  understand 
Thoreau,  327;  love  of  retirement, 


388 


Index 


327,  328.    See  also  13,  14,  32,  139^ 
173,209,295,  378. 

MADISON,  James,  17. 

"  Magnalia  Christi  Americana,"  Cot- 
ton  Mather,  16. 

"  Mahomet  and  his  Successors,"  Irv 
ing?  63- 

"Maine  Woods,"  Thoreau,  302. 

"  Man  of  Letters/'  Emerson,  173. 

"  Manuscript  Found  in  a  Bottle," 
Poe,  236,  244. 

"  Marble  Faun,"  Hawthorne,  189, 196. 

Mark  Twain  (Samuel  Langhorne 
Clemens),  82,  350. 

'  Mary  Garvin,"  Whittier,  224. 

Mather,  Cotton,  16. 

"Maud  Miiller,"  Whittier,  224. 

"May  Flower,"  Very,  129. 

"  Merry  Mount,"  Motley,  278. 

"  Milton,"  Channing,  33. 

"  Modern  Instance,"  Howells,  373. 

"Montcalm  and  Wolfe,"  Parkman, 
340. 

"  Mortal  Antipathy,"  Holmes,  265, 
274. 

"Morton's  Hope,"  Motley,  277. 

"  Mosses  from  an  old  Manse,"  Haw 
thorne,  184,  194. 

Motley,  John  Lothrop,  life  of,  by 
Holmes,  275  ;  birth,  death,  descent, 
276;  educated  by  Bancroft,  277; 
studies  at  Harvard,  Gottingen,  Ber 
lin,  277 ;  marriage,  277  ;  visits 
Russia,  277  ;  fails  as  a  novelist, 
277,  278  ;  historical  works,  278-285  ; 
appointed  minister  to  Austria  and 
to  Britain,  280  ;  Grant's  animosity 
to  him,  281  ;  his  resemblance  to 
Byron,  281  ;  temperament,  282 ; 
style,  283.  See  also  15,  30,  32,  99, 
100,  106. 

"  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,"  Poe, 
237,  244. 

"  My   Literary    Passions,"    Howells, 

37i- 

"  My  Love,"  Lowell,  318. 
"My  Namesake,"  Whittier,  225. 
"  My  Psalm,"  Whittier,  224. 
"  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget,"  Poe,  237, 

245. 


"  My  Study  Windows,"  Lowell,  317. 
"  My  Triumph,"  Whittier,  224. 
"  My  Year  in  a  Log  Cabin,"  Howells, 
378. 

"NARRATIVE     of     Arthur     Gordon 

Pym,"  Poe,  237,  244. 
"Newstead  Abbey,"  Irving,  61. 
"  Nominalist  and  Realist,"  Emerson, 

167. 
"  Notions  of  the  Americans,"  Cooper, 

73- 

Novel,  a  well-written,  253. 
"  November  Boughs,"  Whitman,  358. 

"  OAK  and  Poplar,"  Very,  129. 

"  Ode  for  the  Fourth  of  July,"  Lowell, 

318- 

"Old  Ironsides,"  Holmes,  262. 
"Old  Regime  in  Canada,"  Parkman, 

34°,  343- 

"  Oregon  Trail,"  Parkman,  337. 
"  Outre  Mer,"  Longfellow,  206. 
"  Over  the  Teacups,"-  Holmes,  265. 
Owen,  socialist,  119. 

PAINE, Thomas,  "Crisis,"  17;  "Com 
mon  Sense,"  17. 

Parkman,  Francis,  birth  and  boyhood, 
333  >  goes  to  Rome  to  study  the 
religious  recluse,  334 ;  graduates 
from  Harvard,  334;  lives  among 
the  Indians,  334-337;  first  book, 
"  The  Oregon  Trail,"  337  ;  mar 
riage,  death  of  his  wife,  his  delicate 
health,  338 ;  preparation  for  his 
historical  works,  334-339  ;  appear 
ance,  manners,  death,  340 ;  great 
ness  of  his  French-American  history, 
340 ;  his  qualifications  as  a  historian, 
341-343 ;  characterizes  Acadians, 
Jesuits,  Germans,  French,  Indians, 
343-348  ;  on  America's  possibilities, 
348.  See  also  15,  32,  99,  100. 

"  Partial  Portraits,"  James,  381. 

"  Pathfinder,"  Cooper,  78. 

Paulding,  James  K.,  56. 

"  Paul  Revere,"  1 1 . 

Payne,  John  Howard,  58. 

"Philip  the  Second,"  Prescott,  105, 

112. 


Index 


389 


"Philip  Van  Artevelde,"  Henry 
Taylor,  138. 

"  Philosophy  of  Composition,"  Poe, 
250. 

"Pilot,"  Cooper,  72. 

"  Pioneers,"  Cooper,  72. 

"  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New 
World,"  Parkman,  338. 

"  Planting  of  the  Apple-Tree,"  Bry 
ant,  97. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  his  genius  and 
personality,  231,  232;  birth  and 
descent,  232  ;  adopted  by  Mr. 
Allan,  233  ;  goes  to  school  in  Lon 
don,  233  ;  goes  to  school  in  Rich 
mond,  Va.,  234;  enters  the  Uni 
versity  of  Virginia,  234 ;  enlists, 
235  ;  dismissed  from  West  Point, 
235  ;  loses  the  favor  of  Mr.  Allan, 
235 ;  removes  to  Baltimore  and  to 
Richmond,  236  ;  marriage,  236 ; 
intemperate  habits,  236-238  ;  re 
moves  to  New  York  and  to  Phila 
delphia,  237 ;  death  of  his  wife? 
238  ;  death,  239 ;  personal  appear 
ance,  240;  temperament,  240-242  ; 
as  a  writer  of  fiction,  243-248,  257  ; 
as  a  critic,  14,  248-257;  as  a  poet, 
256-259.  See  also  13. 

"  Poems  of  Two  Friends,"  Howells 
and  Piatt,  372. 

"  Poet  at  the  Breakfast-Table," 
Holmes,  261,  264. 

"  Poetic  Principle,"  Poe,  250. 

"Poets  of  America,"  Stedman,  368. 

Poets  the  worst  judges  of  imaginative 
arts,  310. 

Polite  literature,  defined,  14, 15  ;  alone 
to  be  considered  here,  15-17.  See 
also  30. 

"Political  Essays,"  Lowell,  318,  332. 

"  Poor  Richard's  Almanac,"  19,  21,  29. 

"  Portrait  of  a  Lady,"  James,  380. 

"  Prairie,"  Cooper,  73. 

"Precaution,"  Cooper,  72. 

Prescott,  William  Hickling,  one  of 
our  best  historians,  99;  birth  and 
descent,  100  ;  as  a  student,  100, 101, 
103  ;  injury  to  his  eyes,  101 ;  daily 
habits,  101  ;  visits  the  Azores  and 
Europe,  102 ;  marriage,  102 ;  ap 


pearance,  character,  home  studies, 
103;  "Ferdinand  and  Isabella," 
and  other  works,  104,  105,  107,  109, 
112  ;  visits  England,  105  ;  death, 
105  ;  last  meeting  with  Longfellow, 
105  ;  style,  106  ;  "  Conquest  of  Mex 
ico,"  105,  107 ;  theory  of  Aztec 
civilization,  107,  108  ;  apology  for 
Cort6s,  108;  "Conquest  of  Peru," 
109;  "Philip  the  Second,"  112. 
See  also  15,  18. 

"  Present  Crisis,"  Lowell,  318. 

"Princess  Casimassima,"  James,  380. 

"Professor  at  the  Breakfast-Table," 
Holmes,  264. 

Proudhon,  socialist,  118. 

"Proud  Music  of  the  Storm,"  Whit 
man,  362. 

Puritanism,  n,  16,  33,  127,  176. 

"  Purloined  Letter,"  Poe,  245. 

"  RAVEN,"  Poe,  237,  256. 

"  Red  Rover,"  Cooper,  73. 

"Relation  of  Literature  to  Life," 
Warner,  376. 

"  Representative  Men,"  Emerson,  155, 
167,  169. 

Revolution,  the,  its  literature,  17 ; 
"The  Spy"  and  "Paul  Revere" 
results  of  it,  n,  72. 

Ripley,  George,  his  birth  and  educa- 
cation,  113;  marriage,  114;  one  of 
the  founders  of  the  Transcendental 
Club,  114;  founds  the  "  Dial,"  115  ; 
founds  Brook  Farm,  116;  a  jour 
nalist,  122  ;  the  practical  expounder 
of  Transcendentalism,  123.  See 
also  130. 

"  Rip  Van  Winkle,"  Irving,  57. 

"  Rise  of   Silas   Lapham,"   Howells, 

373- 

"  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,"  Mot 
ley,  279,  283. 

"Rivulet,"  Bryant,  94. 

"  Robin,"  Whittier,  224. 

"SABBATIA,"  Very,  129. 
St.  Simon,  socialist,  117. 
"Salmagundi,"  Irving,  56. 
"Scarlet   Letter,"   Hawthorne,    185- 
186,  194,  195. 


39° 


Index 


"Scholar,"  Emerson,  173. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  Washington  Irving's 
opinion  of  him,  58.  See  also  75,  80, 
164. 

"Self-Culture,"  Channing,  34. 

"Self-Reliance,"  Emerson,  173. 

"  Septimius  Felton,"  Hawthorne,  189. 

"Sketch-Book."  Irving,  57,  69. 

"  Skipper  Ireson's  Ride,"  Whittier, 
224. 

"Snowbound,"  Whittier,  223. 

Socialism,  founders  of,  117-119. 

"Song  for  Occupations,"  Whitman, 
360. 

"  Song  of  the  Redwood  Tree,"  Whit 
man,  360. 

"  Spanish  Voyages  of  Discovery," 
Irving,  60. 

Sparks,  Jared,  26,  49. 

"Specimen  Days,"  Whitman,  357. 

"Spiritual  Laws,"  Emerson,  173. 

"Spring,"  Stoddard,  366. 

"Spy,"  Cooper,  n,  72. 

Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  "The 
Diamond  Wedding"  and  "The 
Doorstep,"  367;  birth,  367;  stock 
broker,  poet,  critic,  368  ;  his  work 
as  a  critic  characterized,  368-371; 
his  views  on  realism,  370.  See 
also  351,  381. 

Stoddard,  Richard  Henry,  birth,  364  ; 
early  struggles,  365 ;  tastes  and 
recollections  as  seen  in  "  The  Coun 
try  Life,"  365;  "Hymn  to  the 
Beautiful,"  366;  "The  Flight  of 
Youth,"  366. 

"Summer,"  Thoreau,  303. 

"Summer  on  the  Lakes,"  Fuller,  134, 
137- 

"TALES  of  a  Traveller,"  Irving,  57, 
69. 

"Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  Long 
fellow,  212. 

"Tanglewood  Tales,"  Hawthorne, 
186. 

Taylor,  "  Bayard,  "  Bedouin  Love 
Song,"  367. 

Taylor,  Henry,  138  ;  "  Philip  Van 
Artevelde,"  138. 

"  Telling  the  Bees,"  Whittier,  224. 


Tennyson,  164,  249. 
Tent  on  the  Beach,"  Whittier,  22.4. 

"  Thanatopsis,"  Bryant,  85,  97. 

"  Their  Wedding  Journey,"  Howells, 
373- 

Thoreau,  Henry  David,  why  his  works 
are  not  general  favorites,  286 ; 
birth,  descent,  boyhood,  288  ;  gradu 
ates  from  Harvard,  288 ;  love  of 
nature,  288,  299,  303-305 ;  love  of 
knowledge,  288,  289 ;  lives  with 
Emerson,  290 ;  tutor  in  the  family 
of  Emerson's  brother,  291  ;  his  life 
at  Lake  Walden,  292-296,  307  ;  im 
prisoned  for  refusing  to  pay  his  poll- 
tax,  296 ;  returns  to  Emerson's,  296  ; 
kinship  of  spirit  with  Emerson, 
297 ;  apathy  to  society  and  politics, 
298,  299;  hatred  of  slavery,  296, 
298,  301  ;  visits  several  places  for 
health,  and  dies  at  Concord,  302 ; 
appearance,  303  ;  disdain  of  civili 
zation,  306 ;  not  understood  by 
Lowell,  327.  See  also  127,  351. 

"Thousand  and  Second  Tale  of 
Scheherazade,"  Poe,  244. 

"  To  a  Dandelion,"  Lowell,  318. 

"  To  a  Waterfowl,"  Bryant,  88,  97. 

"To  a  Yellow  Violet,"  Bryant,  97. 

"  To  One  in  Paradise,"  Poe,  256. 

"  To  the  Apennines,"  Bryant,  94. 

"  Tour  on  the  Prairies,"  Irving,  61. 

Transcendentalists  and  the  Transcen 
dental  movement  in  New  England, 
113-142. 

"  True  Light,"  Very,  129. 

"Twice  Told  Tales,"  Hawthorne, 
180. 

"  Two  Admirals,"  Cooper,  78. 

Tyndall,  John,  on  the  influence  of 
Carlyle,  Emerson,  and  Fichte,  174. 

Typical  American,  Franklin  often 
called  a,  29;  the  phrase  examined, 
29-32. 

"  UNCLE  TOM'S  Cabin,"  Stowe,  u. 
"Under  the  Old  Elm,"  Lowell,  318, 

327- 

"  Under  the  Willows,"  Lowell,  317. 
Unitarianism,     its    first    martyr,  34  ; 

first  organization,  34  ;  first  church 


Index 


39' 


in  England,  34;  first  church  in 
New  England,  34 ;  defended  by 
Channing,  49. 

"  United  Netherlands,"  Motley,  279, 
280. 

"  VENETIAN  Life,"  Howells,  373. 

Very,  Jones,  typical  poet  of  Tran 
scendentalism,  123,  127 ;  his  over 
weening  vanity,  127,  129 ;  love  of 
nature,  128 ;  best  poems,  "  The 
True  Light"  and  "The  Arab 
Steed,"  129 ;  appearance,  130 ; 
death,  130.  See  also  165. 

"Victorian  Poets,"  Stedman,  368. 

"  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  Lowell,  311, 

3J4f 323-325- 

"  Voices  of  Freedom,"  Whittier,  222. 
"Voices  of  the  Night,"  Longfellow, 

205,206. 
"  Von  Kempelen  and  his  Discovery," 

Foe,  244. 

"  WALDEN,"  Thoreau,  287,  305. 
Warner,  Charles  Dudley,  17,  376. 
Washington,  his  life,  by  Irving,  63. 
"  Water  Witch,"  Cooper,  73. 
"  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merri- 
mac,"  Thoreau,  287,  295,  300,  305. 
"Wept  of  Wish-ton- Wish,"  Cooper, 

73- 

Whitman,  Walt,  his  unique  personal 
ity  35°»  35 r»  352;  "Leaves  of 
Grass,"  admired  by  Emerson, 
Thoreau,  and  others,  351  ;  birth, 
351;  descent,  352;  boyish  habits, 
353  ;  printer,  schoolmaster,  editor, 
preparing  to  become  a  poet,  353, 
354 ;  nurses  soldiers  during  the 
War,  354  ;  employed  by  the  govern 
ment  at  Washington,  355  ;  removes 
to  Camden,  N.  J.,  355  ;  paralyzed, 
355  ;  heroism,  356 ;  "  Specimen 


Days,"  357  ;  lack  of  artistic  power, 
357,  360-364;  death,  357;  contra 
dictory  estimates  of  him  as  a  poet, 
3JI>  35°,  351.  358-364,  368,  369. 
See  also  32,  165. 

Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  rarely  a 
favorite  with  the  young,  216 ;  anti- 
slavery  poems,  216;  character  of 
his  other  poems,  217  ;  birth,  par 
entage,  and  early  training,  218  ;  in 
fluenced  by  the  poetry  of  Burns, 
218,  219;  his  genius  recognized  by 
Wm.  Lloyd  Garrison,  219;  dislike 
of  school-keeping,  220  ;  divides  his 
time  between  the  plough  and  the 
pen,  221  ;  writes  antislavery  news 
paper  articles,  221 ;  settles  in 
Amesbury,  222;  "Snowbound," 
his  masterpiece,  223 ;  genius,  224 ; 
analysis  of  himself  in  "  My  Name 
sake,"  225;  death,  226;  weakness 
of  his  constitution,  226  ;  his  Quaker 
ism,  227  ;  social  habits,  228  ;  liter 
ary  method,  229.  See  also  n.  13. 

"  William  Wilson,"  Foe,  233. 

Willis,  N.  P.,  68. 

"Wind  Flower,"  Very,  129. 

"  Wing-and-Wing,"  Cooper,  78. 

"Winter,"  Thoreau,  303. 

"Winter-Piece,"  Bryant,  96. 

"  Witch's  Daughter,"  Whittier,  224. 

"  Wolfert's  Roost,"  Irving,  63. 

"  Woman  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury,"  Fuller,  134, 137. 

"  Woman's  Reason,  A,"  Howells,  373. 

"Wonder-Book,"  Hawthorne,  186. 

Worcester,  Joseph,  178. 

Wordsworth,  compared  with  Bryant, 
94-97.  See  also  164,  249. 

"  YANKEE  in  Canada,"  Thoreau,  302. 
"  Year's  Life,  A,"  Lowell,  312. 
"  Yellow  Violet,"  Very,  129. 


A  GROUP   OF   FRENCH 
CRITICS 

BY    MARY    FISHER 

I2mo.     joo  pages.     $1.25 


Those  who  are  in  the  habit  of  associating  modern  French 
writing  with  the  materialistic  view  of  life  and  the  realistic  method, 
will  find  themselves  refreshed  and  encouraged  by  the  vigorous 
protest  of  men  like  Scherer  and  other  French  critics  against  the 
dominance  of  these  elements  in  French  literature  in  recent 
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The  writer  of  this  book  deserves  the  sincerest  admiration 
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last  expression  of  French  genius  will  be  grateful  to  the  author 
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air.  —  The  Saturday  Evening  Gazette,  Boston. 

An  opportune  and  able  book.  —  The  Chattanooga  Times. 

"  A  Group  of  French  Critics  "  deserves  a  friendly  welcome 
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Here  is  abundant  evidence  that  the  worst  elements  in 
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